Film Uses True Story to tell of Guantanamo Ordeal

Reuters

February 14, 2006

By Mike Collette-White

BERLIN - The true story of three friends who set off from Britain for a wedding overseas and ended up as terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay is the theme of a provocative and disturbing new film by Michael Winterbottom.

The British director, in Berlin for the world premiere on Tuesday of "The Road to Guantanamo" -- in competition at the city's film festival -- was unapologetic for adapting the men's accounts for the big screen.

Considering they accuse the U.S. military of torture at the Cuban prison, where they were held for more than two years before being freed without charge, it is not surprising the U.S. army and the war on terrorism are cast in an unflattering light.

The men have brought a legal suit against U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others over their ordeal.

When asked how he thought Britain and the United States would react to his film, he replied:

"I don't know. I don't really care to be honest."

He did not seek balancing comment from U.S. or British officials to include in a film he described as a portrayal of a personal tale.

The picture is a blend of interviews with the real protagonists, news footage from 2001 and a drama set in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay using actors.

Among its most harrowing scenes are those set in the south of Afghanistan and later in the north during the U.S. bombing of suspected Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds, the side of the conflict that few in the West witnessed through the media.

As well as a searing indictment of the U.S. military and its treatment of suspects, it also touches on the alleged abuses of Taliban detainees by Afghan commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was a key ally of U.S. forces.

Its most controversial element may be the scenes at Guantanamo, where the men say they were beaten, held in solitary confinement for weeks, prevented from praying and pressured to admit they belonged to the al Qaeda network that carried out the September 11 attacks.

"The point of making it (the film) is to remind people about how bizarre it is that somewhere like Guantanamo exists," Winterbottom told reporters after his film was loudly applauded at a press screening.

"If someone said to you five years ago the American government was going to create a prison in Cuba...and would hold people for four years without any trial and often even without charge, people would have thought you were crazy."

The script was based on interviews with the "Tipton Three" -- Rhuhel Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal -- who were inmates at Guantanamo before being released in 2004. All came from the English town of Tipton.

Ahmed and Rasul were in Berlin to promote the film.

The men say they traveled to Pakistan in 2001 for a wedding, and entered Afghanistan when called on by a cleric to help distribute aid.

Caught up in the ferocious U.S. air attacks on suspected Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds around Kandahar, they say they fled north and eventually ended up in Kunduz where they were captured and assumed to be Islamic militants.

Rasul said that while he could never forget his experiences, there were other Guantanamo inmates who were treated far worse.

"We had it rough but we didn't have it as bad as others, for example the Arabs. If you were Arab you were definitely a member of al Qaeda," he said, adding that the Tipton Three had yet to be declared innocent and that Guantanamo should be closed.

Winterbottom, who won the top prize in Berlin in 2003 with another Afghan-related film, "In This World," insisted his movie was not anti-American.


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