The Road to Guantanamo

The Road To Guantanamo is a docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom, who gave us films like 24 Hour Party People and Welcome to Sarajevo. It documents the story of the "Tipton Three" : three British citizens of Muslim faith and Arab descent who were held and tortured in the Guantanamo Bay prison by the US military for three years with no formal charges pressed against them. I'll l warn you up front it's hard to watch. Scenes of torture, murder, death, bombings and other harsh realities of military conflict are not glossed over. It was so upsetting to me that I had to watch it in sections, but it was more upsetting to think that there are prisoners in Guantanamo still living in those conditions with no charges filed against them.

The Tipton Three are Ruhal Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul, and Asif Iqba.. The film shows interviews with all three men, and the first thing you'll notice is their eyes. Their eyes are haunted, and more than one has a hard time looking directly at the camera, or looking up at all. They are very soft-spoken, and tell their stories plaintively. Their journey to Guantanamo started in Britain. In September 2001, a few weeks after the 9.11 attacks, a mutual friend had gone to Pakistan to see family and get married, and wanted his friends to go and attend his wedding. One day at mosque the imam talked of the need for charity and the need to help the people of Afghanistan who were suffering from US military attacks on the Taliban so the friends took a bus to Afghanistan to see if they could help. After about a week in Kabul they wanted to return to Pakistan. On the way back to Pakistan they were caught in US bombings. The vivid scenes of bombings in Afghanistan show with frighteningly reality the chaos that these strikes cause, and the innocent people who are brutally killed by them. In an effort to escape the bombings they get on a truck with all the other people in the village they are in, which turns out to be filled with Taliban members. The trucks are captures by the Northern Alliance, a group of soldiers who have been fighting the Taliban for years with US aid who are helping US efforts in Afghanistan. After being tied up and threatened repeatedly they are taken as prisoners to Mazur-e-Sharif. All their papers and identity documents are taken from them. They were put en masse into a shipping container and left until everyone passed out from lack of oxygen. The soldiers then shot automatic weapons at the container. The next day they took the survivors out of the container and held them in prison for more than month. They were starved, and terrorized. Only when the Red Cross came in and demanded to inspect the prison and document conditions were they regularly given food and water. No charges were filed, and they were never given a chance to identify themselves.

Until the Americans came, that is. When the three identified themselves as British citizens to the US military commander who questioned them at gunpoint they thought they were safe, but it was the opposite. They were taken to the Kabul airport, which the US had turned into a prison, and were beaten and tortured while US military personnel tried to force them to confess to being Al-Queda fighters. Even though the three were British citizens, their heads were shaved, they were put in the now infamous orange jumpsuits, their hands and feet were shackled and hoods were placed on their heads. They were taken to Guantanamo Bay and held for more than 2 years without ever being charged with a crime. They were severely beaten and tortured, and were beaten into confessing to being Al-Queda operatives even though it could be proven they were not. While the movie violence depicted was harsh, the actual treatment the former prisoners described was much harsher. They reported that while in Guantanamo Bay:

* They were repeatedly punched, kicked, slapped, forcibly injected with drugs, deprived of sleep, hooded, photographed naked and subjected to body cavity searches and sexual and religious humiliations.

* The American guard told the inmates: The world does not know you're here - we would kill you and no-one would know .

* Mr Iqbal said when he arrived at Guantanamo, one of the soldiers told him: You killed my family in the towers and now it's time to get you back .

* Mr Rasul said an MI5 officer had told him during an interrogation that he would be detained in Guantanamo for life.

* The men said they saw the beating of mentally-ill inmates.

* Another man was left brain damaged after a beating by soldiers as punishment for attempting suicide.

* The Britons said an inmate told them he was shown a video of hooded men - apparently inmates - being forced to sodomize one another.

* Guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets and tried to force them to give up their religion

*The appointment of General Geoffrey Miller coincided with the introduction of new, harsher, treatment, including short shackling and the forced shaving-off of beards.

In the report they allege that those who represented themselves as being from MI5, or the British Foreign Office, seemed unconcerned with their welfare. (Taken from a 2004 BBC Report)

The film has generated a lot of scrutiny and a lot of criticism, with critics charging that their story of being innocent people caught up in an unfortunate series of events was never questioned by the film maker. Even though it's difficult to watch in spots for anyone with half a conscience or an ounce of morality it's something that everyone should see. There are still prisoners like the Tipton Three being held in Guantanamo Bay and being beaten and tortured. The only way to stop that kind of horror is to shed as much light on it as possible. Torture and "interrogation techniques" like the ones documented in the film go against the Geneva Convention. If we break those rules and torture prisoners, what's to stop our enemies from treating our soldiers and our civilians that they might capture or kidnap the same way? If I had a loved one in harm's way in Iraq or Afghanistan, the idea that my loved one might be treated as these three were treated would keep me up at night.