Sami al-Hajj
Sudanese Guantanamo detainee
Sami Mohy El Din Muhammed Al Hajj (Arabic: سامي محي الدين محمد الحاج), aka Sami Al-Haj (born February 15, 1969) is a Sudanese journalist for the Al Jazeera network. In 2001, while on his way to do camera work for the network in Afghanistan, he was arrested by the Pakistani army and held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for over six years. After his release, al-Hajj wrote a book titled Prisoner 345. He was released without charge on May 1, 2008. He later attempted to launch legal action against George W. Bush.
Al Hajj's case was portrayed in a documentary titled Prisoner 345 by Al Jazeera producer Ahmad Ibrahim.
Background
Al Hajj was arrested in Pakistan on December 15, 2001.
He was on his way to work in Afghanistan as a cameraman for Al Jazeera and had a legitimate visa. He was held as an "enemy combatant" at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, with Guantanamo Internment Serial Number 345, and was the only journalist to be held in Guantanamo.
British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith represented al-Hajj, and was able to visit him in 2005.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2031070. VIAF identifies the subject as 1794159234457303371799. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 2001, 2008 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sami al-Hajj” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.