posted March 09, 2006 05:47 PM              

A sometimes-harrowing film about the Guantanamo Bay detention center garners plaudits just as a UN report puts a critical spotlight on the detention of terror suspects by the United States.

PRAGUE, 17 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A film telling how three British Muslims ended up in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay is considered a favorite to take the top prize at this week's Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Bear, when the award is announced on 18 February.

The film, "The Road to Guantanamo," tells how three young Muslim men left their home town of Tipton, England in 2001 for a wedding in Afghanistan -- and ended up as terrorist suspects in the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The film blends interviews and real news footage from 2001 with staged interviews and reenactments set in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay.

Known in Britain as the "Tipton Three," the men were held at Guantanamo for two years without charge before pressure from the British government led to their release in 2004. The three have never been declared "innocent" and they are now suing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over their incarceration. They accuse the U.S. military of using torture and violating international law by keeping them imprisoned for more than two years without trial.

Journalists who attended the film's world premiere in Berlin on 14 February note that it tells the story of the Tipton Three -- Shafiq Rasul, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Asif Iqbal -- without attempting to verify any of their claims.

Many Americans are likely to be disturbed by the film's graphic depictions of beatings, solitary confinement, and torture allegedly inflicted by U.S. interrogators.

British director Michael Winterbottom says those particular scenes from Guantanamo were shot on a film set in the Iranian capital Tehran.

Winterbottom is unapologetic about his cinematic technique.

And asked how he thinks the U.S. government will respond to his film, he said "I don't know. And I don't really care, to be honest."

"I don't think the film is anti-American in a general sense," Winterbottom continues. "I'm sure there are a lot of people in America who are opposed to Guantanamo -- as there are in Britain. We're not trying to say that the Americans are bad, British are good, Pakistanis are good, or Afghans are good. What we are saying is that what is happening in Guantanamo -- just the fact of Guantanamo's existence -- is shocking. And it shouldn't be there."

The UN And Washington Clash

The film's premiere comes amid calls by the European Union and the United Nations for the United States to immediately close the facility.

In a report issued on 16 February, five independent experts acting as monitors for the UN Human Rights Commission urged Washington to close Guantanamo "without further delay."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan underlined that message on 16 February, saying that, regardless of whether the allegations of torture at Guantanamo are true, the prison should be closed.

Annan called for "charges have to be brought against [detainees]," for them to "be given a chance to explain themselves" and to be "charged or released," which, he said, is "something that is common under any legal system."

But Washington has rejected those calls, insisting that conditions at Guantanamo are both humane and consistent with the Geneva Conventions, the international agreement that sets out the rights of prisoners of war.

U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly denied that detainees are tortured at Guantanamo. He argues that the facility is important in the war against terrorism.

A 'Perverse System'?

A scene from the movie (courtesy photo)"Winterbottom says he wanted his film to show that some Guantanamo detainees are innocent people who have been denied the basic right to a fair trial and to remind cinema-goers that "people who are there are just normal people like all of us and they've been caught up in this incredible, perverse system."

"The trouble is that after a period of a few years, we've all got used to the idea that Guantanamo exists," the director says. "There are 500 people still kept at Guantanamo. And the idea of the film is, at least for that 90 minutes you're watching it, you remember that it is there."

Winterbottom also defends the way he and co-director Matt Whitecross blended archival news footage with interviews and with reenactments of events in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

"We just wanted to find the best and simplest way of telling the story of Rhuhel and Shafiq and Asif," Winterbottom says. He and Whitecross decided early on the three should be in the film as real people. "But at the same time, we wanted somehow to try and find a way of imagining what that journey must have been like -- and from their point of view."

Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, who both attended the Berlin festival, say they were trapped in Afghanistan by the chaos that followed the launch of U.S. air strikes in the autumn of 2001. They say they tried to flee to northern Afghanistan but were mistaken as Taliban and arrested by the militia of Afghan General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Film-goers say Winterbottom's reenactments of events in Afghanistan -- including alleged abuses of detainees by General Dostum's militia -- are among the film's most harrowing scenes.

Rasul, who was at the Berlin festival, says the three "had it rough, but we didn't have it as bad as others, for example the Arabs…[b]ecause we could speak English and communicate with other people."

Any Arab was, he says, considered "a member of Al-Qaeda no matter what -- no matter where you were arrested, what happened, what your situation was."

Ahmed doubts the film will influence governments. "I think it's at the stage where [the U.S. and British governments] can't really say these people are innocent or guilty. They have to keep claiming they are guilty. But the point is influencing public opinion rather than any government out there."

Whether the film will find U.S. distributors is uncertain, Winterbottom says. However, with the film available on the Internet, Americans will have a chance to view the movie even if major U.S. distributors decide it is too controversial for them to handle.

In Europe, the film appears certain to rouse debate in the weeks ahead. In Britain itself, the film will be aired on television, with the broadcast scheduled for March.

*These 3 men were told three months before they were released that they had been cleared. They were still held for those 3 months in cells and denied access to legal council or the right to contact their families. Equivilant to being held hostage.

*There were 4 of them originally - none of them know what happened to their friend.

posted March 10, 2006 01:22 AM              

...thanks so much for that information....

I'm glad they made a film about Gitmo...

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Whether the film will find U.S. distributors is uncertain, Winterbottom says. However, with the film available on the Internet, Americans will have a chance to view the movie even if major U.S. distributors decide it is too controversial for them to handle.

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I WILL see it - one way or another...*sigh*

posted March 10, 2006 01:44 AM              

Waiting for Gitmo

By Nicholas M. Horrock and Anwar Iqbal January/February 2004

(retro article)

At Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, where 660 "enemy combatants" from 42 countries are being held in legal limbo -- charged with no crime yet regularly interrogated, unable to talk with lawyers nor even aware that the U.S. Supreme Court is about to consider their plight -- the building of detention blocks and interrogation centers continues.

Prisoners first arrived here two years ago, after being caught up in security sweeps following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Blindfolded, bound, shorn of facial hair, wearing surgical masks and earmuffs, they were brought to an all-but-forgotten Cold War outpost that was, in the words of base commander Captain Leslie McCoy, "just keeping the lights on." Initially, detainees were penned in Camp X-Ray, a collection of chain-link cages built a decade earlier to contain Haitian boat people. But after human-rights groups protested -- Amnesty International said the cages fell "below minimum standards for humane treatment" -- the somewhat more hospitable Camp Delta was erected.

by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) for an estimated $9.7 million, Camp Delta now has gun towers, a working hospital, and the telltale sign of military permanency: a PX store. Some 2,100 members of an all-service unit known as Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JFTGTMO) have been assigned to Camp Delta, swelling the total base population to nearly half its Cold War complement. JFTGTMO'S motto is "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," and in theory enlisted personnel say "Honor Bound" when they salute officers, and the officers reply "To Defend Freedom," though during a press visit in November only the enlisted seemed to remember their part. (Privately, some soldiers say their real duty mantra is "Groundhog Day," because the routine at Camp Delta is so unchanging "you can't tell one day from the next.")

The last group of detainees arrived in July, and Camp Delta has capacity for 350 more prisoners than it currently holds. Nevertheless, KBR has another contract to build a new camp, Camp V, which will contain advanced interrogation facilities and room for 100 additional prisoners. Which begs the question: Whom are they expecting?

That question goes unanswered, as do most questions about Camp Delta. The U.S. government maintains that Camp Delta falls under neither the United States' nor Cuba's legal jurisdiction, and that enemy combatants have the protection of neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Geneva Convention. In November, after consolidating several cases before it, the Supreme Court announced that later this year it will consider whether detainees should have access to U.S. courts or continue to be held, as their lawyers' petition states, "indefinitely...without access to family, friends, or legal counsel, and with no opportunity to establish their innocence." According to human-rights groups, foreign officials, and statements from the few prisoners who've been freed, conditions at Guantanamo, particularly the detainees' uncertainty about their fate, have prompted a rash of suicide attempts. In addition, critics argue, it appears that many, perhaps most, inmates are not (as Joint Chief Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem has stated) "the worst of the worst [who] if let out on the street...will go back to the proclivity of trying to kill Americans," but rather Taliban cannon fodder and other small fish.

The entire Guantanamo naval base comprises 45 square miles, including Camp America, the 1950s-style enclave where U.S. soldiers live, and which offers drive-in movies, cheap restaurants, and the blessed relief of air conditioning. True, one must keep up the pretense of staring down the Cubans, but Captain McCoy meets regularly with one of their generals, and the Cubans, who can see "80 to 85 percent" of what goes on at Gitmo from their watchtowers, have promised to return any detainees who might escape, McCoy says.

Camp Delta is isolated on an old gunnery range 100 yards from the Caribbean. Daytime temperatures can reach 100 degrees, and the sea breezes offer some relief to the men living in eight-by-seven-foot concrete and metalgated cells. Detainees are caged for all but two brief respites a week to bathe and exercise. They get three hot meals each day. Five times a day, the P.A. system broadcasts the Muslim call to prayer, and each cell contains a Koran, suspended by a surgical mask so as not to touch the ground, and a sign pointing to "Mecca." A green mesh curtain surrounds the compound, so visitors can't see in and prisoners can't see the ocean.

All detainees, according to Brig. General Mitchell R. LeClaire, a National Guard officer and deputy commander of JTFGTMO, are "terrorists, terrorist agents, or support terrorism," a designation made in Afghanistan before the detainees were sent to Guantanamo. But it is now clear that many detainees who didn't meet the necessary criteria were brought to Guantanamo anyway. The former operational commander of Guantanamo, Maj. General Michael E. Dunlavey, even traveled to Afghanistan in 2002 to complain that too many "Mickey Mouse" detainees were being sent his way.

Though many prisoners have been at Camp Delta for two years now, JTFGTMO still conducts 300 interrogations a week, says Maj. General Geoffrey D. Miller, the task force commander. A tough Army officer, Miller was quoted in an Associated Press interview last July as saying that three-fourths of the detainees had confessed some involvement with terrorism, and that their tips had led to additional arrests and knowledge of terrorist techniques. In November, however, he denied telling the A.P. any such thing, saying only that 80 percent of the detainees have been "cooperative" with interrogators. In any case, neither Miller nor the Bush administration has offered any credible evidence that intelligence from Guantanamo has had any value, or if given the amount of time prisoners Miller is credited with developing a carrot-and-stick methodology that rewards detainees who cooperate with better food, some of which is culturally familiar -- like dates and pita bread -- though McDonald's Happy Meals procured from Camp America have also reportedly proved to be a powerful incentive. Improved cooperation enables prisoners to move from maximum to medium security and on to a sort of honor society known as Camp 4. Good behavior alone can keep a prisoner out of maximum security, but moving to Camp 4 requires cooperating with interrogators. In Camp 4, prisoners eat together and are free to congregate and play soccer. A Mother Jones reporter was allowed to see these men but not talk to them. They wore white clothing instead of orange jumpsuits and, almost to a man, had cultivated the full beards common in their homelands.

Three boys between the ages of 13 and 15 live in a small separate prison called Camp Iguana, due to the prevalence of the reptiles. Illiterate when they got to Gitmo, the boys are guarded by a handpicked team of National Guardsmen including police officers with juvenile experience and a teacher who's tutoring them in Pashto. In August 2003, Miller said that they had been "kidnapped into terrorism" and had provided "some very valuable intelligence," and thus should be freed. But by November his recommendation had not been acted on, and the boys were still undergoing interrogation.have been isolated from Al Qaeda any information that might be gleaned from ongoing interrogations would still be valid.

Miller is credited with developing a carrot-and-stick methodology that rewards detainees who cooperate with better food, some of which is culturally familiar -- like dates and pita bread -- though McDonald's Happy Meals procured from Camp America have also reportedly proved to be a powerful incentive. Improved cooperation enables prisoners to move from maximum to medium security and on to a sort of honor society known as Camp 4. Good behavior alone can keep a prisoner out of maximum security, but moving to Camp 4 requires cooperating with interrogators. In Camp 4, prisoners eat together and are free to congregate and play soccer. A Mother Jones reporter was allowed to see these men but not talk to them. They wore white clothing instead of orange jumpsuits and, almost to a man, had cultivated the full beards common in their homelands.

Three boys between the ages of 13 and 15 live in a small separate prison called Camp Iguana, due to the prevalence of the reptiles. Illiterate when they got to Gitmo, the boys are guarded by a handpicked team of National Guardsmen including police officers with juvenile experience and a teacher who's tutoring them in Pashto. In August 2003, Miller said that they had been "kidnapped into terrorism" and had provided "some very valuable intelligence," and thus should be freed. But by November his recommendation had not been acted on, and the boys were still undergoing interrogation.

posted March 10, 2006 04:53 AM              

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Cardinalgal...(in all your British Splendor)

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posted March 10, 2006 02:45 PM              

Cardinalgal, do dictators ever make sense?

posted March 11, 2006 12:27 AM              

I am a Brit too...(half anyway)

My mom's father's(my maternal grandfather) folks were from England, and my mom's mother's (my maternal grandmother) family were too...so the English blood is the other half of me...of course the other half being
American Indian (in all my splendor..turquoise, feather, beads)

posted March 11, 2006 01:39 PM              

Love you too.....