The Road to Guantanamo is a British 2006 docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross about the incarceration of three British detainees at a detainment camp in Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. It premiered at the Berlinale on 14 February, 2006, and first shown in the UK on Channel 4 on 9 March 2006. The following day it was the first film to be released simultaneously in cinemas, on DVD, and on the Internet. It won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Filming took place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, which doubled as Cuba. Mat Whitecross is credited as co-director, and handled most of the interviews with the real-life counterparts to the main characters.[1]
The original poster made to promote the film in the United States (shown right) was refused by the Motion Picture Association of America. The reason given was that the burlap sack over the detainee's head was considered to be depicting torture, and therefore inappropriate for young children to see. Howard Cohen of US-distributors Roadside Attractions condemned this as "inconsistent" when compared to the MPAA-approved posters for contemporary horror films such as Hard Candy or Hostel. The final version of the poster showed just the detainee's manacled hands.[2]
Synopsis
The film documents the personal accounts of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul (the 'Tipton Three');[1][3][4] three young British men from Tipton in the West Midlands of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origins who traveled to Pakistan in September 2001 just days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA, ostensibly to a wedding of a friend of theirs. While staying at a mosque in Karachi, the three decided to take a rash and dangerous trip to Afghanistan to see first-hand the encounters of the region.
Mixed with interviews with the three men themselves, and archive news footage from the period, the film contains an account of the three men's experiences from their travels into Afghanistan and to their capture and imprisonment.
Traveling by van, Ruhal, Asif, and Shafiq, with two other friends, crossed the border in October 2001 just as US warplanes began attacking Taliban positions all over the country. They made it to Kandahar without incident, and later to the capital city of Kabul a few days later. After nearly a month of "lingering" aimlessly around Kabul, the Tipton Three decided to return to Pakistan. But through a combination of bad luck and the increasing chaos, the friends apparently took the wrong bus which traveled further into Afghanistan towards the north and the front-line fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance rebels. The convoy of vehicles they were riding in was hit by an airstrike, and they were left wandering around the trackless and inhospitable terrain of the unfamiliar country. In mid-November, near the town of Baghlan, the three came across a group of Taliban fighters and asked to be taken to Pakistan, but they all were captured shortly thereafter by Northern Alliance soldiers.
Imprisoned at a base at Mazar-e Sharif, they were interrogated and discovered to be of British origin. With no luggage, money, passports, Ruhal, Asif, and Shafiq were handed over to the United States military and imprisoned in a US army stockade for a month with other prisoners, being regularly interrogated and occasionally beaten by US soldiers.
In January 2002, the 'Tipton Three' were declared "enemy combatants" by the US military, and flown with dozens of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they remained for the next two years. They were held in mostly solitary confinement without charge or legal representation.
The rest of the film shows several scenes depicting beatings during interrogation, the use of torture techniques such as 'stress positions' and attempts to extract forced confessions of involvement with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The isolation continued from the Camp X-Ray where they were held as well as another camp during the two years they were there where they were subjected to more questioning by US army and Central Intelligence Agency interrogators.
In one incident, one US army guard at Camp X-Ray desecrated one prisoner's Qu'ran by throwing it to the ground to incite a reaction from the rest of the prisoners.
In another incident, Ruhal witnessed a group of US soldiers severely beat up one unruly and mentally ill Arab prisoner for not obeying their orders. When Ruhal shouts out to the guards that the beatings and torture are in violation of the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of POWs, he is responded with laughter from the guards.
The Tipton Three were all released without charge and without any compensation for their imprisonment in 2004. The three were flown back to England where, one year later, they went back to Pakistan for the wedding they planned to attend in the first place.
The torture depicted in the film had to be softened from the detainees' claims for the benefit of the actors; according to Rizwan Ahmed, they were unable to bear the pain caused by the shackles pressing on their legs, and had to have them cushioned. They were also unable to remain in the stress positions depicted for more than an hour; the Tipton Three claim they were left in them for up to eight hours. [5]
Release
The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in Berlin, Germany on 14 February, 2006. It was broadcast to the UK on Channel 4 on 9 March, attracting 1.6 million viewers,[6] and released on DVD and the Internet the following day. Roadside Attractions, an independent distributor, bought the rights to show the film in the United States in late March.[7]
Iranian authorities not only asked the film's distributor to release the film in Iran, unusual for a Western picture, but, according to the distributor's president, ordered four prints instead of the usual one and offered three times the normal amount. As of late April the film was still awaiting official approval and was expected to be released in late May.[8]
Reception
The film received generally positive reviews, garnering an 86% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Michael Winterbottom won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.
Commentators have criticised Winterbottom for not questioning the decision of the Tipton Three to enter Afghanistan in the first place; a review in The Times (which gave the film 3 out of 5 stars) refers to this gap as "an insane lack of cool perspective,".[3]. Regardless of the wisdom of the men's initial trip, their account of human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay highlights widespread criticism by organisations such as Amnesty International, who referred to the prison as "the gulag of our times" [9] and world leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who stated that "An institution like Guantánamo in its present form cannot and must not exist in the long term" [10].
Actors detained
Four of the actors in the film were detained for about an hour by police at London Luton Airport after returning from the film's premiere in Berlin. Rizwan Ahmed alleged that during questioning police asked him whether he had become an actor to further the islamic cause, questioned him on his views on the Iraq war, verbally abused him and denied him access to a telephone.[11] He was then asked to become an informant for the police.[5]
A spokesperson for Bedfordshire police said that none of the men were arrested and that the Terrorism Act allows the police to "stop and examine people if something happens that might be suspicious". She did not clarify what the actors had done to arouse suspicion. [11]
Lie Lab
In 2007 two members of the Tipton Three - Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul - agreed to participate in the Channel 4 documentary Lie Lab in an attempt to prove their innocence of allegations made by the US Government. The technology used on the show was developed by Professor Sean Spence from the University of Sheffield. It uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at the activity in the pre frontal cortex to determine the truthfulness of statements[12]. Having previously claimed that he had entered Afghanistan for the purposes of carrying out charity work, Ruhal Ahmed admitted on the programme that he had visited an Islamist training camp, where he handled weapons and learned how to use an AK47. Rasul refused to go through with the test.[13]
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An important issue muddied by entertainment
The main issue I have with this film is that it presents itself as a
Reverend Pl3bian from United States - 3 February 2009documentary. It is not a documentary and this is not journalism. It is
entertainment. That immediately destroys all credibility in the eyes of
those who have an unflinching religious loyalty to whatever national or
Christian symbol you want to use.When I sat down to watch this I thought perhaps I would get to see a
film that would make even the most die hard American Good Old Boy sit
down and really start asking some questions. Unfortunately it is just
going to add more fuel to their self righteous fires. Through an hour
and a half I saw ONE scene where a member of the United States military
acted like a reasonable human being. I mean come on guys. This kind of
film is not going to change any minds.If you are honestly concerned with educating people this is not the
film to show them.
These guys were just so foolish!
How in the name of any god, and why would you as a Brit going to a
(tmaterman) from Belgium - 7 November 2008wedding suddenly: go to a war zone to see if you could help and how big
the 'naans' are?? That's what I really did not get. Then the story line
was very weak in my point of view, every time you thought OK, not we're
somewhere, the plot or story just stopped and went somewhere else. For
example: they are once questioned why they were in Afhganistan? … you
expect them to answer that they were there for a wedding, but boom the
camera turns and takes another view without letting them answer on that
question. In the end they answered sometimes; but then it were answers
like: 'Bullshit' (litteraly) on the same sort of questioning. Why did
they not persevere in that they were unguilty? That made me almost
angry… it is a bad thing what happens in Guantanamo, but at the same
time it seemed to me as: what happens if you let a American fool
interrogate a British fool? Anwering foolish, then you get foolish
treatment as well I guess!
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