Sami : 'In the vale between life and death.'

As Gordon Brown welcomed Alan Johnson's return, he was silent about the remaining British residents kidnapped by thr CIA, now resient in Guantanamo Bay Gulag, charged with nothing. Brown was also silent, of course, on all the others incarcerated in what Amnesty International has called 'the gulag of our times.'

Sami Al Haj was detained on December 15th 2001, at Pakistan's Chaman crossing in to Afghanistan, although over the previous two months, he had crossed in and out a number of times, with an Al Jazeera crew. This time he was with journalist Abdelhaq Sadaar. The Taleban had just fallen and the Al Jazeera assignment was to report the aftermath. More

It is essentially timely to bring pressure to bear for these, Sami and all those in the limbo of their solitary cells in Guantanamo Concentation Camp and other shameful secret prisons around the globe, at a time when one man, Alan Johnson, has expressed so eloquently what being held alone, hostage, means - and how precious freedom is. Their lives are no less precious, those who love them no less agonised.