This is a story not known to many Americans. It is about a journalist, caught up in the mayhem of war, in the absurdity of all or nothing/with us or against us attitude that undermined the standing of the US in the world.
He spent seven years of his life in the custody of the US military. He was accused, initially, of filming an interview with Osama bin Laden. It turned out to be someone else. He was then accused of running a jihadist website. It didn’t exist. Then he was accused of selling missiles to Chechen rebels. No evidence. Seven years, behind the chicken wire…released with no apologies, no support.
“Make no mistake, these are the most dangerous people in the world,” said at the time, President George Bush.
Today, Sami al-Hajj is once again a journalist. He leads the human rights desk at Al Jazeera where, I suppose, he is trying to make sense of his life and recuperate seven years of his life.
A life lost at the hands of US Marines and a society where the concept of risk prevention is so ingrained that it tosses out rationale and empathy. And in the place of rationale and empathy we find fear, anger, and an exaggerated perception that demonizes the ‘other’ and inversely, creates new risks (for more on this see Ulrich Beck’s The Risk Society).
Cliff Stattford Smith from Reprieve was able to briefly visit Sami al-Hajj at Guantanamo in 2006. Smith jotted down notes which were then confiscated and sent, by snail mail, to Washington. A month later, Smith received the notes, but only those allowed by the government.
“His interrogators (at Guantanamo) wanted only to turn him into an informant against Al Jazeera,” wrote Smith in the New Statesman.
When journalists are gagged by oppressive governments then human rights abuse and the witness thereof are silenced.
Eventually the truth comes out. And eventually this chapter of American history will go down in shame.
