Prisoner Held and Mistreated at Gitmo for Six Years Without Charges Released

Time magazine today has a brief piece on Sami Al-Hajj, an al-Jazeera TV cameraman who was recently freed from Guantánamo. He was held there for six and a half years without facing any charges.

“Al-Hajj penned thousands more words during years as Prisoner 345 —including accounts of being force-fed through a tube during months of a hunger strike; of being locked in a cage for two weeks with no toothbrush or soap, after guards found an iron nail outside his cell window; and of being placed in a single cell with no blanket or bed, after refusing to submit to vaccinations he had already received in Qatar.”

As Time notes, both Senator McCain and Senator Obama “have said they would shut the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, where about 250 men remain behind bars — some in their eighth year of captivity. But neither presidential candidate has outlined when and how they plan to do it.” Luckily Human Rights First does have such a plan. Here’s a multiphased blueprint to close Gitmo within a year.