A leading media protection group is renewing calls for the U.S. to release an Al Jazeera cameraman from Guantánamo Bay. Sami al-Hajj is now more than eight months into a hunger strike protesting his imprisonment without charge or trial. Doctors who’ve examined him say it appears he’s given up his fight to live. Yesterday, Democracy Now! spoke to Joel Campagna, Middle East program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, about al-Hajj’s case.

Joel Campagna: “He is a journalist and assistant cameraman who worked for Al Jazeera and who was detained in the line of work, and for over five years now yet to be charged with a crime. And I think the implication of his arrest is that the U.S. military can effectively remove a journalist from the battlefield, hold them for years without end, without charge, and not be compelled to charge them with a crime. And we’ve been calling on the U.S. military to either charge Sami al-Hajj with a crime and give him a fair trial or release him.”