Seasons in Hell-from Empire Burlesque

Tweet Chris Floyd outlines the treatment of Guantanmo prisoners, many of whom have had no charges preferred against them. Below is a portion of his story about the al jazeera reporter Sami al-Haj. To read the whole story, go here: http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php

I. The Life of a King
The Independent has a remarkable story on Sami al-Haj, the Sudanese journalist who has been held in George W. Bush's concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for five years. Haj has not been charged with any crime, but he is undoubtedly guilty of a grave sin in the eyes of the Bush Regime: he is a cameraman for Al Jazeera.

He was captured while trying to enter Afghanistan, on a valid visa, to cover the war there in June 2002. Pakistani authorities detained him without any cause, then turned him over to the Americans. No doubt someone -- or many people -- collected one of the hefty bounties that American forces were handing out in Pakistan and Afghanistan in those days for anyone whom the paid denouncer declared was a "terrorist suspect." Hundreds of people ended up in the Gitmo concentration camp this way, and Haj was one of these. Yet as the Independent notes, 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." His eyewitness account of life inside the Bush gulag is harrowing -- and humiliating for every American in whose name the Bush Regime has perpetrated this filth. Some excerpts:

"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, " [Haj wrote]. "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 leveled 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.

This is a pattern that we've seen over and over with Bush's Terror War captives. Innocent people are seized -- or bought -- by American security forces, who then attempt to force the captive to become an informant. Those who refuse are then plunged into the bowels of Bush's torture-and-terror apparatus. It is a crude, brutal, indeed Stalinist way of trying to create an intelligence network on the fly, and on the cheap.