SAMI AL-HAJJ RELEASED FROM GUANTANAMO
* Sami Al-Hajj was born in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1969. He grew up in central Sudan, the second eldest of six children.
In the late 80s’ Sami Al-Hajj travelled to India to learn and practice English and from the early 90s’ he began to work at a Qatar-based beverage company, where he was promoted to an executive assistant post.
According to USA intelligence the company and Sami Al-Hajj personally provided financial support to Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya through the Al-Haramain Foundation, which is an Islamic Charity. The US claimed Sami Al-Hajj travelled to Azerbaijan at least eight times to carry money on behalf of his employer, allegedly to support the Chechens. The information was obtained from the interrogation of Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, allegedly a senior lieutenant to Osama Bin Laden, who was arrested in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States.
Sami Al-Hajj began to work for Al-Jazeera Arabic TV channel as a camera man in the late 90s’.
Sami Al-Hajj was captured by Pakistani troups near the border with Afghanistan in 12/2001 and handed over to USA authority in 01/2002 in operation “Extraordinary Rendition”. Another Al-Jazeera reporter – Tayssir Allouni , who worked in Afghanistan in late 2001, prior and during operation Absolute Justice was sentenced in Madrid, Spain, on 09/26/2005, to 7 years in jail for collaboration with Islamic terror.
In early 2007 Sami Al-Hajj went through a hunger strike in Guantanamo to draw attention to his case. He was represented by lawyers from Human rights organizations in USA.
After six years jailed in harsh conditions, on 05/01/2008, Sami Al-Hajj along with two other fellow Sudanese countrymen: Amir Yacoub al-Amir and Walid Ali, was released from Guantanamo back to his home country Sudan without being officially charged on any crime whatsoever. A Moroccan detainee, Said Boujaadia, was released too and sent to Morocco on the same flight which took the Sudanese back home to Sudan.
The release of the three detainees from Guantanamo is, probably, a part of the USA political effort to warm the relations with SUDAN, despite Darfur crisis, in order to prevent Sudan from joining the Iranian led coalition in the Middle East and being a part of the “Axis of Evil” in US terms. (See – Dangerous SUDAN )
– 275 inmates are still kept in GUantanamo (05/2008).
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