[Ppnews] Al-Hajj's Guantanamo cartoon banned

[Political Prisoner News]

Al-Hajj's Guantanamo cartoon banned
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DDAA8ED2-368A-4029-9408-7DC97847233F.htm


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  Reprieve reproduced Scream for Freedom from a description provided by al-Hajj

The US army has banned the publication of four 
cartoons drawn by Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera 
cameraman held in the US military prison at 
Guantanamo Bay, according to his lawyer.

The pieces, called Sketches of My Nightmare, 
include a drawing depicting al-Hajj, who has been 
on hunger strike for eight months, as a skeleton being force fed by US guards.

The drawings were submitted to the military 
censor but they would not permit their release.

However, detailed descriptions of the sketches 
were allowed through the censorship process and 
Lewis Peake, a political cartoonist, was able to 
recreate one entitled Scream for Freedom.

Al Hajj described the way he sees himself being 
force fed in the  so-called "Torture Chair" - the 
restraint chair into which they are strapped 
twice a day to have a 110cm tube forcibly 
inserted into one nostril so that liquid food can be administered.

The tube is pulled out after each feeding and the 
prisoner is left in the chair for up to two hours 
so he can be force fed again if he vomits.

'Torture chair'

"The first sketch is just a skeleton in the torture chair," he explained.

"My picture reflects my nightmares of what I must 
look like, with my head double-strapped down, a 
tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, with 
no eyes and only giant cheekbones, my teeth 
jutting out – my bones showing in every detail, every rib, every joint.

"The tube goes up to a bag at the top of the 
drawing. On the right there is another skeleton 
sitting shackled to another chair.

"They are sitting like we do in interrogations, 
with hands shackled, feet shackled to the floor, 
just waiting. In between I draw the flag of 
Guantanamo – JTF-GTMO – but instead of the normal 
insignia, there is a skull and crossbones, the 
real symbol of what is happening here," he said.

Cori Crider, one of the Al Jazeera cameraman's 
lawyers, said that he first showed her the "very 
gruesome and incredibly detailed sketches" when she visited him on February 1.

"He explained he felt compelled to express the 
nightmare that he and the rest of the hunger 
strikers in Guantánamo have been suffering. 
Sami's sketches spoke volumes about what he goes 
through every time they strap him into that chair 
for forcefeeding," Crider said.

Free speech

The cartoonist is also reproducing the other 
three sketches which show other aspects of the 
prisoners' treatment in US custody, Reprieve, a 
British charity which provides legal 
representation to Guantanamo detainees, said.

"You have to question, I have to question as an 
American, why the US government thinks that free 
speech in the form of this picture is a somehow a 
threat to US national security," Clive Stafford 
Smith, director of Reprieve, said.

He suggested that the US military was censoring 
the images to keep details of the treatment of 
Guantanamo detainees out of the media.

"I have seen plenty of evidence that is extremely 
embarrassing to the American government, and 
that's because this sort of picture gives you a 
visual image of what poor Sami goes through twice a day.

"I think a picture sometimes paints a thousand 
words, and I think that is what the US government 
is afraid of," he told Al Jazeera.

Al-Hajj was seized by the US military while he 
was covering the war in Afghanistan for Al 
Jazeera's Arabic channel and has been held as an 
"enemy combatant" without trial or charge since 2001.




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