CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, he is almost six years now in Guantanamo Bay. Sami Al-Haj is an Al Jazeera cameraman. I spent a lot of time with him, and I’ve investigated his case thoroughly. And look, he is no more a terrorist than my grandmother. But, you know, we don’t ask people to just accept that. All Sami wants is a fair trial, but, of course, he hasn’t got one.

I was down in Guantanamo just last week, and Sami, on the fifth anniversary of his detention by the United States—he’s a very patient guy—after five years, he went on hunger strike. And today, you know, as we sit here with our coffee, he hasn’t voluntarily eaten for 277 days.

And what I just discovered this week—I got it unclassified on Monday—the latest allegations against him. Every time they come up with something, we prove it’s nonsense. And yet, on September the 11th—this is the second time they’ve chosen September the 11th to do this—they alleged—and I’ve got it right here; I’m going to read it to make sure I’m accurate you—that the training that Sami received to become a supposed terrorist was, quote, “the detainee was trained by Al Jazeera in the use of cameras.�?And that’s the sort depths, unfortunately, to which we’ve sunk in making allegations against people.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain how he was picked up.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, he was picked up on the border of Afghanistan when he was going in with the film crew—he’s the cameraman—to work with Al Jazeera, and they were working out of the same house as CNN. We can’t prove it, because, of course, it’s all secret, but the strong indications are that they picked him up because they thought he was the cameraman who filmed the Al Jazeera interview with bin Laden, because Taysir Alouni had been the correspondent and there was a guy called Sami as the cameraman. As has so often, sadly, been the case, they were wrong. Their intelligence was wrong. Sami wasn’t the person who did that. But by that time, he was in US custody, and he’s been there ever since, and his little seven-year-old son Mohammed hasn’t seen him for six years.

AMY GOODMAN: But even if he had been the cameraman that filmed the interview with Osama bin Laden, that’s not a basis to arrest somebody. John Miller, who’s the spokesperson for the FBI, or was for a while, interviewed Osama bin Laden when he was an ABC reporter.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: I see you squirming a little as a journalist. And, of course, that’s right. But we were in court in the District of Columbia back in December 2004, and the issue came up about what the definition of “enemy combatant�?was, and one of the hypotheticals that the judge posed was, if you, as a journalist, were the guy who interviewed bin Laden, and then you failed to tell the CIA where bin Laden was, would you be an enemy combatant? And, you know, that was one of the ones they wouldn’t rule out.

AMY GOODMAN: Wadah Khanfar is the managing director of Al Jazeera, and in February of 2006, Democracy Now! went to the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Doha. This is what he had to say about Sami Al-Haj at the time.

WADAH KHANFAR: For more than three years, he is still in Guantanamo Bay. And we have received some letters from him, you know, that goes through the, of course, American guards, but basically I would say that the issue of Sami al-Haj again has created that rift and that feeling that there are many things that have gone wrong in the relationship between the Arab world and the United States of America after the 11th of September.

We have been—I remember, as a journalist, before 2001, a lot of our Arab governments feared, you know, and they were very—it was difficult for them to jail a journalist, because they would say then that the Americans will make big voice, big loud voice about it, and they will condemn us. So they would respect a little bit of freedom of expression for us to act, because they don’t want to make big issue from the American civil society and organizations. Now, we have someone who is spending more than three years in jail, and we cannot even get any real explanation why he is there and what is the crime of Sami al-Haj to be held in Guantanamo.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at the pamphlet that says Sami’s first interrogation at Guantanamo came after two days of sleep deprivation. Agents from the Pentagon, CIA, FBI were present, but as much as they wanted to extract incriminating evidence from Sami, they were as interested in gaining inside information about Al Jazeera and recruiting him as a spy both in Guantanamo and in the event of his release.

WADAH KHANFAR: How could we explain this? I mean, I have read this in the newspaper. The lawyer—I mean, the reporter who received that from the lawyer confirms this particular incident. He has been asked to spy on us. He has been asked to give information about the relation—the assumed relationship between Al Jazeera and al-Qaeda, during his coverage in Afghanistan. And the man is still in jail, and he did not give any information. And unfortunately, even they have, according to the reports that we received, he was told that if he gives this kind of information, he would be immediately discharged.

AMY GOODMAN: Wadah Khanfar, head of Al Jazeera. Clive Stafford Smith, you’re Sami al-Haj’s lawyer; your response?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, of course, I’ve been down to see Wadah, and I was cracking a joke in his office that I’d like to know the coordinates of it, because George Bush had just said he was going to bomb it. Wadah didn’t think that was very funny. And, unfortunately, you can see his point. And it’s a very sad moment when we in the United States get to the point of threatening one of the few organizations in the Middle East that is genuinely committed to free speech. You look before 9/11, the United States, even in the Bush administration, was a very strong supporter of Al Jazeera. And I am an admirer of them. And I think we should be in favor of free speech. And, you know, I’m glad for what you’re doing for Sami al-Haj, but Western journalists in general need to do more for this guy who’s locked up in Guantanamo.