Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj was released from Guantánamo Bay naval base on May 1 along with eight other detainees. He was one of three Sudanese inmates flown to Khartoum. The release came one week after Fast Forward ran its cover story on al-Hajj.

Reportedly in frail health, he was taken to a hospital after being removed by stretcher from a United States Air Force jet. He had been on a hunger strike since January 2007.

In a television interview from his hospital bed, speaking about his imprisonment, al-Hajj said that “rats are treated with more humanity” than the detainees in Guantánamo Bay.

There was conflicting information on his status. An anonymous official in the U.S. Department of Defense told the Reuters news agency that al-Hajj was not released but transferred to the Sudanese government, while the Sudanese justice minister told Al-Jazeera that he would not be detained or imprisoned.

After being arrested in Pakistan in December 2001 while on assignment, al-Hajj was held for nearly six years as an “enemy combatant” without being charged or facing trial for any crime. The United States military alleged he was a financial courier between a United Arab Emirates-based company and Chechen rebels, and that he had associated with other Middle Eastern terrorists, but produced no evidence to support its claims.

Human rights groups such as Reprieve, the U.K.-based organization that legally represented al-Hajj, asserted that he was held in order to extract information about Al-Jazeera.

At this time, 275 detainees remain in Guantánamo Bay.