This Tuesday the social forum will receive one of its most distinguished guests at this year’s edition, the journalist and cameraman from Al-Jazeera Sami Al-Hajj, who will participate in the debate Prisoner in Guantanamo, where he will tell of his experience behind the walls of the US military base in Cuba after having been detained while working as a journalist in Afghanistan.

Al-Hajj will also share the three axis of his struggle since he was released from prison –with a hunger strike for more than 400 days in between- in 2008. Axis that work to close the military base in Cuba and expose the madness of this illegal prison; make US politicians pay legally for the arbitrary detentions and human rights violations that are being committed inside Guantanamo; and help the ex-prisoners detained there to overcome the shock after years of being denied their freedom in extreme conditions.

The pharmaceutical industry and the legalization of cannabis

Besides the debate with Sami Al-Hajj, the Social Forum will also analyze today the role of the pharmaceutical industry and the interests at play that mean that the authorization of the therapeutic use of cannabis, the use and legalization of cannabis continues to sound like utopia in Europe. The session titled The pharmaceutical industry and the legalization of cannabis will have Mario Lap, European director of the American company Cannabis Science, and Mariano García de Palau, doctor and the director of the first clinic in Spain specialized in assessing patients regarding the therapeutic use of cannabis.