Review: Gitmo under the Microscope
Road to Guantanamo
Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, directors
Roadside Attractions, 2006
Gitmo: The New Rules of War
Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh, directors
Atmo, 2005
This summer, two chilling accounts of life inside the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay are putting faces on the human rights violations alleged by Amnesty International and others.
The docudrama “Road to Guantanamo” recounts the ordeal of four young British Muslims who travel to Pakistan for a wedding in September 2001. An ill-advised side trip to Afghanistan to see events for themselves leaves the bridegroom and his friends trapped in the country when the U.S. bombing begins and the Taliban falls. One man disappears in the chaos and is never heard from again. The others are rounded up by the Northern Alliance, which hands them over to the U.S. military — a step one of them says he thought would be their salvation.
Instead, they are shipped to Guantanamo Bay where they were held without charges for more than two years. Confined to 6’x6’ open-air cages, isolated, sleep-deprived and beaten, the men were repeatedly interrogated about membership in radical groups. American authorities claimed they appeared in a video from an Osama Bin Laden rally. The men denied the allegation, saying they were at home in Tipton — MI5 later proved that one was at work, the others on probation and unable to leave.
Two of the men, who came to be known as the “Tipton Three,” were plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case that ruled detainees are entitled to access to U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The three were finally released in 2004 with no apology.
Directors Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom (“24 Hour Party People” and “Tristram Shanty: A Cock And Bull Story”) tell the men’s story through archival news footage, dramatic recreations and interviews with Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul.
“Road to Guantanamo” aired last spring on British television. Since then, the controversial story has continued to grow. Two of the actors and two of the ex-detainees were temporarily held and interrogated at the airport by the British police when they returned home from being honored at a Berlin film festival. In May, the Motion Pictures Association of America rejected the film’s advertising poster depicting a hooded and blindfolded man hanging by his shackled wrists. The poster now shows only the man’s arms and wrists.
That same month, the men won the right to file a $10 million lawsuit against U.S. officials, claiming their treatment at Guantanamo directly violated their right to practice their religious faith.
In “Gitmo: The New Rules of War,” Swedish filmmakers Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh use the plight of fellow countryman Mehdi Ghezali as a springboard to explore whether the detainees’ treatment at Guantanamo provided a template for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
The U.S. military welcomes journalists’ requests to visit Guantanamo, or “Gitmo,” as the soldiers call it. Free flights from Miami, cheap hotel rooms and guided tours—all are part of a government-sponsored travel package. Just don’t expect to see any prisoners. The only hint of their presence among the clips of soldiers shopping, swimming and golfing is the eerie sound of their raised voices in the night. When the filmmakers ask what they are saying, they are told the men are praying.
Despite the limitations on them, Gandini and Saleh straightforward questions coupled with government records yield some surprising answers, and the documentary builds revelation upon revelation as they hopscotch from place to place delving into the growing number of mercenaries (euphemistically called contractors) employed in the war on terror, their role in interrogations and the question of whether Guantanamo’s former commander was replace for being “too nice,”
Using interviews with Janet Karpinski, the former commander blamed in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and others, Gandini and Salaeh lay out a strong case that people very high up in the U.S. government sanctioned the torture captured in the Abu Ghraib
photos. The result of their legwork is a searing piece of film and a disturbing portrait of U.S. policy.
review by Irene Svete