Three Al Jazeera journalists found guilty and sentenced to 3 years at retrial in Egypt

Three al-Jazeera journalists convicted of "spreading false news" have been sentenced to three years in prison at their retrial in Cairo. One journalist, Baher Mohamed was given an extra six months.

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The three were Mohamed Fahmy a Canadian, Egyptian Baher Mohamed, and Australian Peter Greste. Fahmy and Mohamed were led away from the court back to prison after sentencing. The third journalist, Australian Peter Greste, was deported back to Australia earlier in the year but nevertheless was put on trial again in absentia. Greste and Fahmy had been originally sentenced to seven years and Mohamed to ten in July of 2014. These convictions were overturned in January of this year. The three are all accused of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, the party of former elected Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. The party is now banned as a terrorist group and supporting them is a crime. All three deny the charges and claim they were simply doing their job a reporters. The lawyers for the three journalists are expected to appeal the decision.

Lyle Doucet of the BBC said the verdict came as a shock in the room filled with Egyptian and foreign journalists. Although a guilty verdict was still expected, many thought that they would be given a lesser sentence and allowed to go free given that they had already served almost a year in prison before being freed pending this trial. Canada had hoped that Fahmy would have been deported as was the Australian journalist. Fahmy had given up his Egyptian citizenship in order to faciliate such a move. However, president el-Sisi said he could not interfere with the judicial process. Of course he had already done so in deporting Greste. This obviously annoyed the judiciary who tried Greste in absentia during this retrial.

Greste tweeted that he was "shocked" and "outraged" by the verdict and described it as "yet another deliberate attack on press freedom".When the guilty verdict was read out, Mohamed Fahmy's wife, Marwa Omara, began to sob. Her ordeal had now lasted 608 days. Fahmy's lawyer,Amal Clooney, said: "The verdict today sends a very dangerous message in Egypt, It sends a message that journalists can be locked up for simply doing their job, for telling the truth and reporting the news."Clooney asked president el-Sisi to pardon the three journalists. She said that she would also push to have Fahmy deported to Canada. Now that the trial is over el-Sisi would not be interfering in the ongoing judicial process were he to do so. However, he may wish to show that he will not be pushed around by foreigners. He may regret having deported the Australian journalist.

Given that Egypt has had several mass trials at which hundreds of those opposing his regime, most supporters of former president Morsi, have been condemned to death, el-Sisi probably worries little about the credibility of his regime and its judiciary. He knows that the US and Russia will continue to send him arms and other aid. Just recently Egypt has passed an even more stringent law as part of its anti-terror legislation: A new anti-terrorism law in Egypt will make publishing news that contradicts the official version of events in terrorism-related cases a crime punishable by prison sentences, a setback for the freedom of the press, according to the local journalists union.

Evidence during the trial showed that the journalists had not been licensed. Al Jazeera answers questions about this and other aspects of the trial.

Pentagon rule book claims journalists can be legitimate targets

A new Pentagon rule book on the "laws of war" detailing legitimate warfare practices, as approved by the U.S. military, claims that journalists may be legitimate targets.

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According to the new rule book:Now, the American 1,176-page “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” says that it is perfectly legitimate to shoot, explode, bomb, stab, or cut journalists they deem “belligerent". They seem to want to make sure they cover all the ways they will kill enemy reporters. They clarify that poison and asphyxiating gases are still no-nos that will not be employed in the war against journalists.

While still allowing that in general journalists are civilians, the rule book also says that journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents.

The term "unprivileged belligerent" is not defined. The account given in Wikipedia would not seem to allow journalists as unprivileged belligerents: An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a combatant who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war. An unlawful combatant may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action; subject of course to international treaties on justice and human rights.[1]Journalists would not be engaged in armed conflict at all in most situations.

Chris Chambers, a journalism professor at Georgetown university said that he did not know what "unprivileged belligerents" means and said “the Geneva Convention, other tenets of international law, and even United States law – federal courts have spoken on this – doesn’t have this thing on ‘unprivileged belligerents’.It gives them license to attack or even murder journalists that they don’t particularly like but aren’t on the other side.” Chambers notes that as the law is now even embedded journalists are regarded as protected under international law. There is no clarification of when a journalist could be an unprivileged belligerent.

The new law could be considered simply a codification of past practice. Journalists have often been targeted it appears not because they were on the "other side" but because they were critical of the side that targets them. In the early days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney administration considered bombing the main studio and office building of Al Jazeera in Qatar. While it was decided not to go ahead with the plan there was a rocket and machine gun attack on the Al Jazeera Baghdad bureau on April 8, 2002. The US claims the attack was "inadvertent" although Al Jazeera had given the US the coordinates of the site. Another attack by a tank firing an artillery shell on the Palestine hotel where almost the entire foreign press stayed killed a Reuters cameraman and a Spanish TV worker.

If the journalists work for the other side, present practice appears to provide them no protection at all. NATO attacked the Radio, Television, of Serbia(RTS) headquarters in Sarajevo. Sixteen employees of RTS died when a NATO missile hit the building. Amnesty International called the bombing a war crime while Noam Chomsky said it was an act of terrorism. However, many defended the attack:Tony Blair, in Washington for Nato's 50th anniversary summit, insisted that bombing television stations was 'entirely justified' since they were part of the 'apparatus of dictatorship and power of Milosevic'. He added: 'The responsibility for every single part of this action lies with the man who has engaged in this policy of ethnic cleansing and must be stopped.'

What is allowed for NATO and the US is surely legitimate for Israel. In an attack in Gaza, Israel fired several missiles directly at a building housing Al-Aksa TV station, but it also housed offices of a number of foreign journalists. Two Al-Aksa cameramen were killed in the strike. Israel admits targeting the journalists killed claiming that since they worked for the Hamas-owned stations they were terrorists.

Egypt releases one journalist but 183 people sentenced to death

Egypt has released one Al Jazeera journalist, Australian Peter Greste, who had been in a Cairo prison for 400 days. Two other Al Jazeera journalists remain in prison.

Greste was released by Egyptian authorities unconditionally according to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Canadian Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy was still imprisoned yesterday but his release is expected at any time. His UK colleague Sue Turton reported to the Star newspaper: “It does look like it’s really imminent. I know we’ve been saying that for the last 24 hours.” The Canadian Foreign Affairs minister, John Baird, who had been pressing Egyptian authorities for Fahmy's release announced his resignation yesterday. Al Jazeera claims its three journalists were wrongly convicted back in 2013 under Egypt's anti-terrorism laws. Among the charges was spreading lies to help the Muslim Brotherhood, designated as a terrorist organization in Egypt. The regime even promoted the trial: Ahead of the trial the prosecution aired a 22-minute video on a pro-regime network of the what they described as the lair of the "Marriott Cell" – the hotel where the Al Jazeera reporters were staying when they were arrested on charges of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and abetting terrorism. To an ominous soundtrack – the music was stolen from the comic book movie "Thor: The Dark World" – the camera pans over computers, cameras, notebooks, and ethernet cable. The short film was designed to feed the xenophobic and anti-Muslim Brotherhood hysteria of post-coup Egypt. While both Fahmy and Greste have dual citizenship the third journalist, Baher Mohamed, has only Egyptian citizenship. Greste said that his release was "a really big step forward" for Egypt and he hoped that his colleagues would also be released.

Response to the news was muted in Egypt where press freedom has been restricted under President el-Sisi. Julie Posetti on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) said that under new legislation passed by the Abbott government, journalists could also risk imprisonment for reporting on terrorism: "While the government is celebrating the release of journalist Peter Greste, it's still responsible for legislation that represents a chilling attack on media freedom in our own country." In Canada, the Harper government also passed legislation that will make it a crime to support terrorism. Conceivably, this legislation could also be used against journalists. 

 However, imprisoning journalists may be a high profile sign of Egypt's perverted justice system but the worst injustices have been mass trials of protesters and imposition of hundreds of death sentences, as well as killing of hundreds of protesters in earlier crackdowns on protests against the military coup. Even as Greste was released an Egyptian court sentenced another 183 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to death for their role in protests after the present president el-Sisi mounted a military coup that overthrew the elected government of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. In early 2014 there were mass show trials in which more than 2,100 protesters were sentenced to death. One trial alone in April of 2014 recommended the death sentence for 683 people including the leader of the Brotherhood Mohammed Badie. President Obama has requested $1.3 billion for Egypt's military in the next budget.

Marwan Bishara of Al Jazeera on the Arab Spring

Video is HERE.

Marwan Bishara is senior political analyst for Al Jazeera (English). He also hosts a program called "Empire" that examines the agendas of great powers. He talks of his book "The Invisible Arab" in the video. His talk is half an hour of the video.
 The video has no imbed feature so here is the link. Bishara taught international relations at the American University of Paris. He has written extensively on politics particularly U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. In the video he discusses his new book "The Invisible Arab".

Bishara has published in The New York TImes, The Guardian, Le Monde, and many other well known newspapers. "The Invisible Arab" has received considerable praise. For example Publisher's Weekly says: "Bishara…provides a compelling and spirited history of the modern Arab nation, from colonial liberation to the recent revolutions….Fast-paced, impassioned, and eloquent."

 Bishara uses a clever analogy that derives from his experience in filling out an airline assessment on his flight from Doha in Qatar to Washington D.C. He thinks that some journalistic assessments of the Arab Spring follow the same type of formula. There is the initial starting point then the progress with stopovers etc. and then the arrival at the destination. In the Arab Spring assessment the destination would be something akin to western liberal democracies. Many accounts of the Arab Spring Bishara thinks are overly simplistic in part because what is going on in the Middle East is often not even noticed in the west. This brings us to the topic of the Invisible Arab.

The Arab is invisible in that what is happening and growing in the Middle East is not noticed because only certain events attract media attention. Events relating to energy may merit an article. Terrorist attacks or threats will also generate attention. Finally events related to Israel and its security will also stand out. However the conditions within Middle East countries that were developing the preconditions for the Arab Spring went unobserved for the most part. As well as this external invisibility there was an internal invisibility.

Even the people within countries subject to the Arab Spring often did not observe what was happening. The main causes of this were censorship of any news of opposition and control of the media by the Middle Eastern regimes involved. One of the key features in developing a common Arab consciousness as Bishara sees it was satellite TV. This medium provided a means through Arabic broadcasting independent of the existing regimes to express the common consciousness that was developing.

While many in the west saw the Arab Spring primarily as a youth movement dedicated to promoting liberal democracies Bishara points out that the situation is much more complicated. Islamists for example are a powerful and important part of what is developing. Indeed in countries such as Egypt the youthful protesters who wish something akin to western liberal democracy in Egypt are obviously a minority.

Al Jazeera closes Beijing office after reporter expelled

Not only did China expel Al Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan but the government also did not grant visas to other reporters. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) was appalled by the action. The group said the action was a grave threat to all foreign reporters' ability to function in China.

The group said:“This is the most extreme example of a recent pattern of using journalist visas in an attempt to censor and intimidate foreign correspondents in China,” The expulsion is rare. The last journalist known to have been expelled was in 1998. However that reporter was accused of possessing state secrets.

Al-Jazeera said it had no choice but to close its English-language bureau, after China also failed to grant visas to other journalists working for it, but that it would continue to work with the government to reopen.

There was not even any official reason given for the expulsion of Chan except that she had violated unspecified rules and regulations. However, China was angered by a documentary aired last November on China. The reaction seems a bit delayed! For more see this article.

Al Jazeera is being Foxified?

From some of the comments on this piece and also noted in the article, many Arabs already consider Al Jazeera another western oriented outlet. In fact some consider it to be run by the CIA. However, in the US it seems to be thought of as a mouthpiece for terrorists by some.


Published on Saturday, June 9, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Is There a ‘Foxification’ Underway at Al Jazeera Television?
by Danny Schechter
Sources inside Al Jazeera who are in a position to know what is going on now confirm to MediaChannel.org that there is an internal struggle underway that may dilute Al Jazeera’s independence and steer it in a more pro-western, pro-US direction.

“There is already a change of tone and focus in the news,” a veteran insider reveals. He blames the shift on a reorganization of the network’s governing structure a month ago that has put a former Ambassador from Qatar to the USA in a commanding position.

Al Jazeera broadcasts from a state of the art facility in Doha, the capital of Qatar, a wealthy independent state run by an Emir who has, until this point, remained close friends with the US while allowing Al Jazeera its independence.

“Nobody is talking about it publicly and nothing is quite clear yet but it looks like there is new pressure from the government of Qatar [the oil and natural gas rich Gulf state that bankrolled Al Jazeera], as well as a political battle over how to manage the channel inside its government with the US and its supporters, including the editor of the Arabic edition of Newsweek, lobbying in the shadows.”

The United States is a major trading partner with Qatar and maintains a vast military facility there. The high profile Coalition Media (ie.
propaganda) Center was based in the country, and the Pentagon has used the base airfield to supply the war effort in Iraq. Lebanese sources report that US planes airlifted cluster bombs from that base to Israel for use in its recent war against Hezbollah. Israel’s relations with Qatar are said to be close.

Washington and London were never happy with Al Jazeera’s political independence. Its offices in Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed in the early days of the war, and more recently there have been reports that President Bush considered bombing Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, but was only stopped by a strong dissent by Britain’s Tony Blair. Al Jazeera has been denied access by the British government to documents that would confirm this widely reported (and believed) story that has also been officially dismissed.

“You don’t need to bomb Al Jazeera to change its direction,” said my source. “There is a softer way to influence its direction by taking it over from within and it can happen quietly almost as if in slow motion. You ‘broaden’ some programs, announce new ‘guidelines,’ issue new edicts reinforcing top-down control, purge some professionals you don’t like, and then give more positive unchallenged airtime to backers of US foreign policy. Washington would not be open about any behind the scenes role it is playing in all this for fear of triggering a very negative public reaction.”

The irony here is that for many years Al Jazeera made a point of giving substantial airtime to US officials and their surrogates to show fairness. This even led some hardliners in the Arab World years ago to accuse of the station of being CIA-backed and even pro-Israel. But whatever exposure they got was never enough for a Pentagon that practices “Information Dominance” and seeks to exclude all contrary views. They expect the kind of uncritical coverage they received on American TV.

Ironically, a former US military briefer became so disgusted with US media manipulation that he joined Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera reporters have been killed by US soldiers, prosecuted in Spain, and imprisoned. One remains in Guantanamo with no charges against him. These external actions have only strengthened Al Jazeera’s resolve and won audience sympathy for the station. That may be why a new internal intervention is underway.

The Friends of Al Jazeera website carries a post suggesting that this is exactly what is happening.

“It is rumored that the new pro-US Board of Directors (which include the former Qatari Ambassador to the United States, Hamad Al Kuwari and Mahmood Shamam who are both are clearly sympathetic to the US Agenda in the
region) and their representative at station, the new Qatari Managing Director, Mr. Ahmad Kholeifi is a result of pressure placed on the Emir of Qatar by the US Administration.

Rumours of a ’soft editorial shift’ towards a more pro-Qatari and pro-US agenda are already floating around media circles in the region.

Sources inside AlJazeera have confirmed that the Board has already instituted radical changes that threaten the stations editorial integrity and independence. In less than a month since the pro-American Board of Directors was appointed, sweeping edicts affecting the whole of AlJazeera have been passed down by the newly appointed Qatari Managing Director, Ahmad Al Kholeifi.”

My source believes the rumors of an imposed top-down change are true.

Al Jazeera’s journalists are diverse and committed to the channel’s mission. They would not likely be silent if they felt their work was under attack or being unduly pressured. On the other hand, for all their independence, they know they are highly dependent on subsidies from the Emir. If he is being pressured, they know that that will eventually have an impact on the channel’s managers.

Media owners have a tendency to meddle in news presentation, with politics, ego and power tripping often motivating factors. Sometimes, darker forces are involved.

In this case, why is a pro-US diplomat being given managerial authority while a respected and experienced journalist/general manager is apparently being ousted?

Until now, by and large, the internal politics of Qatar has not been given a high profile on the air but that may be changing, I am told, with more Qataris visible as pundits and interview subjects in recent weeks.

Perhaps the Emir who is putting up the cash also wants more visibility and is engineering compliance. Perhaps Qatar now wants to use the channel to build a higher profile for itself. In the Middle East, media and politics are often intertwined. If Al Jazeera is politicized, it could lose the credibility it has earned.

Too much tampering could easily backfire and undermine Al Jazeera’s support.

Now ten years old, Al Jazeera has grown from an offshoot of BBC’s Arabic Service into a feisty and independent multi-channel media company with a global satellite footprint that makes almost as much news as it reports.

Brandishing the slogan “The opinion and the other opinion,” Al Jazeera is known for strong reporting and carrying diverse and outspoken views including videos by Osama bin Laden and opposition voices to many governments backed by the US.

Al Jazeera says its coverage is balanced but critics, especially on the right in America, have targeted it as “terrorist TV,” a slogan designed to discredit its news and programming, which was first only seen in Arabic but now has a separate English channel.

In some ways, the network’s operations mirror and reflect the volatile politics of the Middle East in which it is based, a region which is itself torn by external interventions, conflicts with and among wealthy and traditional elites, not to mention insurgency, war, political conspiracies, and competing nationalistic interests and internationalist aspirations.

Hailed as the fifth best-known brand in the world, the nature of that brand is now being contested. Is an implosion on the horizon, or will the Channel sort out its tensions and emerge even stronger as a worldwide competitor against conventional look-alike, think-alike corporatized media?

What is disturbing is that Al Jazeera had the potential of bringing real diversity to the global news agenda with more reporting from the Third World and even about the news world itself.

In an increasingly monopolized media marketplace with concentration of ownership on the rise, with Rupert Murdoch bidding for Dow Jones and Thompson taking over Reuters, there are fewer and fewer highly visible independent outlets. A recent scandal at the ineffective US created Al Hurra station may have led the Bush Administration to stop competing with a more popular brand and try to take it over instead.

US cable outlets have kept Al Jazeera English off the air-one way of marginalizing it with American viewers-but that also impacts on its ability to make money-something, I am told many Qataris expect. Maybe they are willing to trade the channel’s integrity for a shot at the quest for profitability that drives most of the media industry. But being greedy could backfire if the channel’s reputation suffers. We still don’t know who is leaning on whom?

As an innovator and an exception to the unbrave world of media, Al Jazeera has been exceptional. It would be shame to see its core values compromised just as it becomes a bigger player in a world that desperately needs media outlets that care about the conditions of the world’s people.

It may be time for its viewers and friends to demand that Al Jazeera be allowed to remain the respected and crusading force it has become in broadcasting and world journalism. Let’s hope some combination of insiders and backers will be able to insure that outsiders with parochial or imperial agendas cannot “fix” what isn’t broken.

Journalists and media activists worldwide may need to get engaged to send a message of concern to the Emir and the media hitmen (ie. consultants) who are apparently now sneaking around in Washington and Doha with the hopes of turning Jazeera into Foxeera.

Let Al Jazeera Be Al Jazeera!

Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He has attended three conferences at Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha and interviewed key journalists there. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

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Reporting on life in Guantanamo

This is from the Independent. Some aspects of the report are similar to conditions claimed by Omar Khadr the Canadian citizen recently charged there whose case was dismissed. Al Jazeera still pays Sami's wages to his wife in Qatar. It sounds as if perhaps Sami's passport may have been used by someone else and it was whoever had used it they were after. The US seems to have used the opportunity to try and recruit Sami as a spy within Al Jazeera.


Reporting on life behind the wire: The Sudanese journalist held in Guantanamo Bay
Sami al-Haj is a Sudanese journalist who was captured on his first assignment for Al Jazeera and has been detained without charge in Guantanamo Bay since June 2002. But, remarkably, imprisonment hasn't stopped him reporting on life behind the wire. Andrew Buncombe tells his story and talks to those he left behind
Published: 09 June 2007
Sami al-Haj spends his days alone, thinking of his wife and the son he barely knows.

He spends his time thinking of the world beyond the razor wire, of the world away from the walls and bars, the orange jumpsuit he is forced to wear and the military guards that oversee him. He thinks too of his fellow prisoners incarcerated along with him at Guantanamo Bay and the anguish they endure.

And when he gets an opportunity – which is rare – he tells someone what he has seen.

Haj – prisoner identification number 345 – is one of around 380 detainees still being held at the prison located at a US naval base located on the south-east coast of Cuba. Yet he is unique among the prisoners in that he is the only one who was seized and detained while working as a journalist. It was while working as a cameraman for the Al Jazeera network that Haj was seized by the Pakistani authorities as he was trying to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. He had a valid visa but that made no difference to either the Pakistanis who grabbed him or the Americans who held Haj without charge – first at Bagram Airbase and then at Guantanamo. The seventh of June marked the fifth anniversary of his imprisonment at that off-bounds, "Alice-in-Wonderland" jail in the Caribbean.

But if the Bush administration was able to incarcerate the cameraman, it has been unable to prevent him behaving as a journalist. Throughout the five years he has been held, 38-year-old Haj has continued to act like a reporter, detailing and documenting what he has seen and experienced inside Guantanamo and then passing this on to his lawyers. Indeed, with the US administration's strenuous efforts to prevent all but the barest information ever emerging from Guantanamo, Haj is one of the very few eyes and ears able to provide a first-hand account of an aspect of the US government's "war on terror" that it would rather the world did not see.

"This is where the United States leads the world in the so-called war on terror, a Holy war of errors," says Haj, in one of the "dispatches" passed for clearance by US censors. "At one time or other more than 700 people have been held in the cages of Guantanamo Bay in the ... years since January 2002. They belong to 45 different nationalities."

He adds: "For more than four years many of us have been isolated in a small cell, less that 10ft by 6ft, with the intense neon lights on 24 hours a day. Many of us are not allowed to exercise outside these cells for more than one hour, just once a week. We are provided with food and drinks which are not suitable for the iguanas and rats that live beside us on Torture Island."

Haj is a Sudanese citizen who had been working for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network for only a matter of months when he was seized close to the Afghan border. The order for him to be detained apparently contained the number of his old passport, which had been lost two years previously and Haj thought the matter would quickly be cleared up. He was very wrong.

The US authorities have never formally charged Haj, though during the time of his incarceration at Guantanamo they have levelled various accusations at him – accusations that have changed from year to year. Among the allegations that have emerged during a series of Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) is that Haj ran a website supporting terrorism, that he sold Stinger missiles to Islamic militants in Chechnya and that he interviewed Osama bin Laden. He denies all the charges, though his lawyers point out that another Al Jazeera cameraman was present during an interview with Bin Laden. Could this be a case of guilt by association?

Remarkably, during 130 separate interviews, his interrogators have questioned him very little about his alleged links to the al-Qa'ida leader or other radicals.

Rather their questions have focused almost exclusively on the operation of Al Jazeera. One of his lawyers reported that Haj said he had been told by several people that he would be set free if he agreed to return to Al Jazeera and spy for them. Each time he turned them down.

"I don't know how they would put pressure on Al Jazeera. Perhaps wait for him to confess to something he has not done and then take that against Al Jazeera," says Ahmad Ibrahim, a colleague of Haj's at the Arabic language network. "The fact that he had only been working for Al Jazeera for four months did not allow him to know too much. He was just a normal person. He was not very experienced."

In one of his pieces of reportage, Haj talks of the interrogation sessions he and the other prisoners endure. He claims that he or other prisoners have witnessed a female US interrogator pull the testicles of one of the detainees, that two interrogators had sex in front of a prisoner, that a female interrogator smeared what she said was her menstrual blood on a prisoner and that a prisoner was forced to walk on all fours while a interrogator rode on his back.

"During our days, months and years of detention we are constantly hauled off for interrogation sessions which are a by-word for abuse," Haj writes. "Here we encounter the 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques'. One such method is solitary confinement which, for a selected number of prisoners, has been known to last for years. Interrogation itself can last for 28 hours without interruption, the prisoner forced to crouch or stand in stress positions, deprived of sleep, sexually humiliated without any clothes, sometimes even having Israeli or US flags wrapped around their heads. If they want to frighten us, then when we are bound and hooded they bring in the dogs."

More than five years of protesting his innocence, of thinking about his family, has taken its toll on Haj. Back in January he started a hunger strike in protest at his incarceration. Twice a day the prison authorities strap him to a chair using 16 separate restraints and force-feed him using a tube that has on occasion been forced, inadvertently, into his lungs rather than his stomach.

By way of punishment for his "difficult" behaviour he has been held in solitary confinement. Those who have been permitted to visit him say he has lost weight and is pale. And despite this the cameraman says he will not give up his effort to speak out.

In another note, he writes: "I sometimes ask myself, who are these people who are held in cages not even fit for wild animals? How do these humans live? The Prophet Jonah lived inside a whale and Moses lived inside a coffin, so the Guantanamo cells are only for those who are strong and those who have a will to adopt the path of the prophets. If I stay all my life in these cages, let those who inflict this on me do what they wish, but I feel I am living the life of a King."

"His number one concern is the other guys in there," says Zachary Katznelson, one of several lawyers who represent Haj and who last visited him at Guantanamo on 30 April. Katznelson, senior counsel with the London-based group Reprieve, adds: "As much as he misses his family he thinks it's vitally important that he is there to report all this. He has said he is willing to be the last one if it means the story gets out – if the world gets to know about Guantanamo."

The prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was established at the beginning of 2002 as a place to keep terror suspects rounded up in President Bush's war on terror. Deliberately located outside the US proper to avoid both the arm of the civil justice system as well as prying eyes, around 800 prisoners have been taken to the prison over the past five years. Of those, some 340 have been released.

When the first handcuffed, shackled and hooded suspects were taken to the prison, the authorities did their best to portray them as a dangerous and pressing threat to the US. The men were so terrifying, claimed the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, they "would chew through a hydraulics cable to bring a C-17 [transport plane] down".

Five years on, only four of those prisoners have been charged and just one – Australian David Hicks – brought to trial. Meanwhile an analysis of the Pentagon's own documents by New Jersey's Seton Hall University found that 55 per cent of the prisoners brought to Guantanamo are not alleged to have have committed any hostile acts against the US. Just eight per cent are accused of fighting for a terrorist group while 86 per cent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani authorities and handed over "at a time when the US offered large bounties for the capture of suspected terrorists".

The prison camp's operation has been condemned by the United Nations, the American Bar Association and the Red Cross – the only organisation permitted free access to the prisoners and which broke with its normal protocol of not commenting publicly to warn in 2003 of the declining mental health of many of the inmates. It said the nature of their incarceration and interrogation was "a form of torture". Three prisoners hanged themselves last year, and last week a Saudi man was found dead, apparently having taken his own life.

In another memo, Haj reflects on why the operation at Guantanamo – a stark affront to the rule of law and due process – has been allowed to proceed.

"What does the Guantanamo experiment mean to Bush?" he writes. "Why has he set up Torture Island, to wreak havoc on the reputation of the USA? Look at Guantanamo through a clear glass and it is undeniable that a catastrophe has befallen the entire world as a result of this cowboy reaction to the sad death of innocents in September 2001."

Thousands of miles away, Haj's wife, Asma, also reflects on the injustice she believes has befallen her husband. She is struggling to bring up the couple's son, Mohammed, now nearly six, by herself while still trying to campaign for Haj's release. Speaking by telephone from Doha, the capital of Qatar, where Al Jazeera is still paying Haj's salary, she says her faith has given her some comfort.

"Everybody in life goes through a trial or a trauma at some point," she says. "I live in the hope that I will be reunited and it is that hope that keeps me going. It's hard to talk about."

One of the most difficult things, she says, has been watching her son grow up without his father. To this point she has been able to get by telling Mohammed about his father's plight only in the vaguest sense, yet she realises that such a situation cannot last. "I think the questions will be more sophisticated as the time goes on," she says. "I don't think even the Americans know why they have taken him or why they have not put him on trial."

From all accounts, Haj became a cameraman not because he felt some draw to journalism, but because he thought it would provide a good income for his family. Given such a matter-of-fact background, his dedication to speaking out about what he sees inside America's gulag is all the more remarkable. "I did not have a chance to learn about his journalism because he was seized on what was really his first assignment," says his wife.

Those demanding that the US either release Haj or else bring him to trial come from all quarters. The Sudanese government has called for his release as has the media organisation Reporters without Borders, which has described Guantanamo as a "humanitarian outrage".

Meanwhile in Guantanamo, aware that his friends and supporters are demanding his release, Sami al-Haj continues to do his best to bear testimony to what is taking place at the US prison camp. In one of his notes he imagines a scene at the Statue of Liberty, her right arm extended and lit up. Yet the light shines to the ground where a series of small, claustrophobic cells can be seen, packed with people wearing orange jump suits.

"The enormous statue cries out to the world 'Liberty and Justice for All'," he writes. "Yet despite the floodlights all around Lady Liberty her voice becomes weaker and the world begins to see that she is either deceiving or deceived. Else how could she allow those cells to be built in her very foundation?"