Tuesday, October 17, 2006

"At first, interrogators said Mr. Hajj had shot video of Osama bin Laden during an Al Jazeera interview, but it turned out that they may have mixed him up with another cameraman of a similar name. When that assertion fell apart, the authorities offered accusations that he had ferried a large sum of money to a suspicious Islamic charity, that he had supported Chechen rebels, and that he had once given a car ride and other assistance to an official of Al Qaeda. One indication that even our government may not take those accusations so seriously is that the interrogations barely touched on them, Mr. Hajj’s lawyers say. “About 95 percent of the interrogations he went through were about Al Jazeera,” said one of the lawyers, Zachary Katznelson of London. “Sami would say, ‘What about me? Will you ask about me?’ ”"