Lawfare

Released Al-Jazeera reporter faked inability to walk off USAF plane

Released Guantanamo detainee Sami al-Haj faked weakness and the inability to walk off the US Air Force plane once it landed in Khartoum.

According to DoD spokesman Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, the aircrew who brought him to Khartoum on a military transport said he was relaxed, standing up, walking around during the entire flight. When they landed at Khartoum, he looked out the window, saw all the media, and immediately collapsed in a chair. “I can’t walk,” said the former cameraman for Al-Jazeera, demanding an ambulance. He can be seen being carried off the plane on a stretcher, wincing as if in pain. In another video shot the same day, he’s seen reuniting with his family, walking, standing, smiling, miraculously healed. Gordon reports that the man who said he engaged in a 16 mos hunger strike “left Guantanamo four pounds lighter than when he arrived.”

Here is Al-Jazeera’s report. Note that 39 seconds into it the video shows Sami al-Haj, only minutes after arriving at a Khartoum hospital, walking unassisted and hugging his son.

Sami al-Haj looked pretty healthy to me for a man held in a “concentration camp” for six years.

Slipping fast towards September 10

In case you have not heard, the trial judge for the Military Commission of Osama bin Laden’s chauffer-bodyguard has decided to let Salim Ahmed Hamdan pass notes to his follow Guantanamo detainees. Henry Mark Holzer suggests:

Perhaps Hamdan could write: “Khalid, this is me, your ‘ole terrorist buddy from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Waziristan. I’m just down the road here in another detention facility, eating well, praying to Allah, confounding my military guards, consulting with my America lawyers, having the Court rule military commissions illegal. We’re asking for all kinds of stuff the infidels can’t give us, and when they don’t that will really gum up these proceedings. What a country!”

What can’t the infidels give them and why it matters.