In the recent developments in the case of Sami Al-Hajj, Al-Jazeera TV channel called the American administration and the army to apply the universal standards of human rights, and to provide medical care for Sami Al-Haj, because of the obvious deterioration in the mental health of Sami and the magnitude of the suffering he is experiencing. This was after American and British health experts revealed that the mental condition seriously deteriorated and that he is in dire need of medical attention. Based on the comments by Sami Al-Hajj, these experts believed that he was suffering from severe depression and was described by them that he is in the negative suicide situation. According to Daniel Chryson, a specialist in mental health with a long experience in working with prisoners in the United States, Bosnia, East Timor, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, the case "falls within the category of those who suffer acute depression who often turn to emergency cases where one loses all hope, where everything with regard to value is lost and there is a clear change in his current behavior and it is even said that he had lost the ability to coexist with the harsh and painful surroundings, isolating himself, he has turned into a case of negative suicide." The counselor of neurological psychological Medicine Hugh Ricardez, have expressed worry that Al-Haji "may have entered the stage of mental disorder due to his permanent arrest, and because his suffering did not seem to end." Sami Al-Hajj had gone into a hunger strike in the past months for a period of 100 days to protest on his detention.

Aman Network, The Network of Centers of Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture in the Middle East and North Africa, considers the issue of the cameraman Sami Al-Hajj a humanitarian issue summarizing the suffering of all the detainees in Guantanamo prison, and the network holds the American authorities full responsibility for everything that happens to the cameraman Al-Haji especially according to the reports of the doctors that say that he entered the negative suicide phase, which requires immediate release for his prompt treatment and saving his life with all other prisoners.

The network called the international community to break its silence and end the blackest page in the history of humanity: the Guantanamo prison.

 22/09/2007

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