The Road to Guantanamo

The detention of enemy combatants at the Marine Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is the center of a great deal of controversy throughout the world. We are told that those there deserve to be there; they are a threat to America; they are terrorists.

The Road to Guantanamo tells the story of three British citizens who ended up there and what they endured for over two years before they proved their innocence and were released. The “Tipton Three� (referring to their home town near Birmingham, England) tell their story with the help of filmmakers Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross.

The film is a mixture of interviews, as the real Tipton Three tell their story, news footage, and dramatizations of the events. The film flows almost seamlessly between these as the story unfolds.

It begins when Asif Iqbal sets off for Pakistan shortly after the September 11 attacks. He is going to meet the woman his parents have arranged for him to marry. He asks his friend Ruhel to be his best man, and soon Ruhel, and two other friends, Shafiq and Monir fly to Pakistan to help Asif prepare for the wedding.

While there, they attend a mosque where the imam calls for people to go to Afghanistan to help the people there. All four, along with Shafiq’s Pakistani cousin, volunteer. It will be a humanitarian service, and it will be an adventure for these young people. (Asif and Ruhel are nineteen when this begins. The others are in their early twenties.)

Once in Afghanistan, sickness and language barriers get them stranded in a Taliban held area. When the Taliban surrenders and the Alliance forces round up people, the four all are taken prisoners. During this time, Monir gets separated from them and is never seen again.

In time the three Britons are handed over to the US military for interrogation in Kandahar and later Guantanamo. During the imprisonment and interrogation they are treated as animals, and tortured in a variety of ways. Even the contact from the British embassy only tells them to come clean about their terrorist activities.

After over two years, they are released and returned to their homes in England.

It should be noted that this film tells the Tipton Three’s story. It does not seek verify the story nor tell the stories of others in the camps or of those who oversaw the interrogations and torture. Given the situation they were captured in, it was certainly possible that they could have been involved with terrorists. In the story, those investigating accept as a fact that they were terrorists. No one ever tried to determine if they were or not. The interrogators used that assumption and moved on. The men were judged guilty without any trial or real investigation.

The power of this film is to be found in the indictment of US (and British) policy. At one point in the middle of the film, after we know that these are innocent men locked up for being in the wrong place, there is a clip of President Bush stating that the detainees in Guantanamo deserve to be there. They are bad people and killers. No doubt many are, but we know that at least these three are not.

We see terrible tortures and dehumanization done by our military. The whole approach is to get the prisoners to talk, and in time, they do – they tell their interrogators whatever they want to hear.

This film will raise a good deal of controversy because it is critical of American policy. It should be noted that it really doesn’t spend very much time speaking of that policy or placing it within a wider context – only showing the result of the policy on these three young men.

Although the film indicts our policy, we should also understand that it indicts our sense of justice to allow such a thing to exist. The US continues to hold nearly 500 men there. Were the Tipton Three the only innocents caught up in this dragnet? No one knows. To date, only 10 people have had charges filed against them. None have been found guilty.

What relationship do we have to these things done in our name? Are we willing to allow three innocent men (or more) to be so brutalized so that we can feel safe? Are we willing to look the other way so we won’t be bothered by such sights? Will we, like the priest and Levite of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, pass by on the other side of the road?

I should note that about a week after I saw the film screened, three detainees hung themselves in the cells at Guantanamo, bringing the issue into the news once more. World leaders, politicians and humanitarian organizations renewed calls for the camp at Guantanamo to be closed. The administration claims it is not doing anything because of pending Supreme Court cases about the legality of holding these people. Through it all, the imprisonment and torture go on.