Journalistic portfolio

THE MOST FAMOUS JOURNALIST IN THE WORLD

The world’s most famous journalist isn’t Peter Arnett or Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein or Dan Rather. His name is Sami al-Hajj. Chances are you’ve never heard of him. That should worry you.

Al-Hajj is a television cameraman from Sudan, and until this month he was a prisoner in the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. For years, al-Jazeera followed his odyssey day by day. Al-Hajj became famous to the millions across Asia and Europe who watch the Arab satellite channel’s broadcasts and read its website, but he remained all but unknown in America. Most Americans never saw his photograph in mainstream American newspapers or heard about him on television.

Like other journalists, al-Hajj covered the Afghanistan war in late 2001. Armed with a television camera, he sought to re-enter Afghanistan on Dec. 15, 2001, as his film crew had done since October. A Pakistani border guard seized him and turned him over to Americans. That began a seven-year nightmare: Al-Hajj was sent to a Pakistani jail, to the American air base at Kandahar, Afghanistan, and for long years to Guantánamo, where his imprisonment included force-feeding by nasal tube after he stopped eating in protest.

The Bush administration hinted darkly that al-Hajj was linked to Osama bin Laden, that he’d been involved in transporting weapons and funding terrorist organizations. The administration produced no evidence to support its charges, and al-Hajj denied them, noting the considerable and obvious evidence that he was, literally, a card-carrying journalist.

He was never charged with a crime. He was never brought before a judge. At last, as suddenly and as inexplicably as he’d been captured, he was released.

As his lawyer has charitably suggested, al-Hajj’s initial capture may have been an honest mistake. Any competent journalist tracking this story, however, would soon have uncovered a more insidious narrative. Al-Hajj’s news crew had covered the human aftermath of American bombing in Afghanistan, and al-Jazeera broadcasts images of the savage cost of warfare that the Bush administration would prefer the world not see.

So was al-Hajj a terrorist? Or a foil through whom the administration hoped to discredit one of its most persistent media critics, and perhaps intimidate others? If al-Hajj was a terrorist, why didn’t the administration charge and try him? Why did it release him?

Although he was interrogated more than 130 times at Guantánamo, his interrogators never found any link between al-Jazeera and bin Laden. Was this journalist imprisoned, beaten and interrogated because, as far as the Bush administration was concerned, the enemy was a critical and influential press organization? Was al-Hajj imprisoned because the administration thought it could exploit him to discredit al-Jazeera? Is that what made al-Hajj an “enemy combatant”?

Not so long ago, our press would at least have asked these questions. It should have been shouting from the rooftops about al-Hajj – demanding evidence, a trial, the truth. But our press was silent.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-11