The Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has been released from Guantanamo Bay. Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, al-Hajj has spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. Earlier today, al-Hajj landed in his hometown of Khartoum, Sudan, where he was immediately rushed to a hospital. After a tearful reunion with his family, al-Hajj said he worried for the prisoners he left behind at Guantanamo.

Sami al-Hajj: “I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantanamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity.”

Sami al-Hajj was flown into Sudan on a US military aircraft along with two other Guantanamo prisoners. They told Al Jazeera they were blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to their seats during the flight home. According to Al Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar, the US military tried to coerce al-Hajj into spying on his employers at the network.