July 6 2007 Financial Times
Letters
A reminder of another detainee From Mr Jeremy Putley.
Sir, The good news of the release of the BBC's correspondent Alan Johnston in the Middle East is a reminder that the al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Haj, is being kept essentially incommunicado in indefinite detention in the remote prison administered by the US military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Mr al-Haj was detained while attempting to re-enter Afghanistan on assignment in December 2001 and has been unlawfully imprisoned ever since.
According to a recently published book by his lawyer, Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons (reviewed in the FT June 24), the first 100-plus interrogations carried out by his American captors did not attempt to establish that Mr al-Haj was an "enemy combatant" but were solely directed towards turning him into an informant against al-Jazeera. Clive Stafford Smith writes of his client that he is "a prisoner in the Bush administration's assault on al-Jazeera".
Like all the prisoners now at Guantánamo Bay, Mr al-Haj has been deprived of access to due process under law. His 5½ years of wrongful imprisonment should be remembered as we celebrate the welcome release of Alan Johnston.
Jeremy Putley Harrogate, N Yorks HG1 5JU