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<font size=3>Al-Hajj's Guantanamo cartoon banned <br>
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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DDAA8ED2-368A-4029-9408-7DC97847233F.htm<br>
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<img src="cid:7.1.0.9.2.20080318155906.0342b728@freedomarchives.org.0" width=533 height=300 alt="[]">
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</font><font size=1>Reprieve reproduced <i>Scream for Freedom</i>
from a description provided by al-Hajj<br><br>
</font><font size=2>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.<br><br>
The pieces, called <i>Sketches of My Nightmare, </i>include a drawing
depicting al-Hajj, who has been on hunger strike for eight months, as a
skeleton being force fed by US guards.<br><br>
The drawings were submitted to the military censor but they would not
permit their release. <br><br>
However, detailed descriptions of the sketches were allowed through the
censorship process and Lewis Peake, a political cartoonist, was able to
recreate one entitled <i>Scream for Freedom.<br><br>
</i>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.
<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>'Torture chair'<br><br>
</b>"The first sketch is just a skeleton in the torture chair,"
he explained. <br><br>
"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.<br><br>
"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. <br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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. <br><br>
<b>Free speech<br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
"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.<br><br>
He suggested that the US military was censoring the images to keep
details of the treatment of Guantanamo detainees out of the
media.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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