Without prior announcement, the military returned al-Hajj to his home country of Sudan with two other prisoners who had also been held for years at the US-run Guantánamo Bay prison. Al-Hajj was gaunt and too weak to stand or speak as soldiers carried him off the C-17 cargo plane and placed him, still shackled, on a stretcher. He was transported immediately to a hospital in Khartoum. His brother told reporters he did not immediately recognize al-Hajj, who had been seized as a healthy 32-year-old and now resembled a man in his eighties.

Al-Hajj spent the last 16 months of his imprisonment as a hunger striker. Twice a day, soldiers strapped him into a restraint chair and shoved a feeding tube through his nose to his stomach. Human rights lawyers for al-Hajja survivor of throat cancerhave said that the force-feedings scraped his throat raw. Over the course of 480 days, the journalist lost 40 pounds.

While imprisoned, he was denied medical care for his cancer, kidney infections, and injuries. He was also subjected to beatings, extreme temperature exposures, sexual assault, threats with military dogs, and other human rights violations. Al-Hajj also reported that guards defaced the Koran and flushed the book down the toilet.

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