The Road to Guantanamo?

[JAStewart]

Since Guantanamo is frequently associated with conspiracy theories I thought I'd ask this here, but if it needs to be moved into the politics forum, that cool.

Have any of you seen The Road to Guantanamo (film)? I watched it with the Stop The War society last year at uni. Was very interesting but want to know how much of it is bunk. There are plenty of conspiracies surrounding the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo - whats true? whats not?

[Good Lt]

I heard that the terrorists at Gitmo actually like the Eminem and Christina Aguilera albums being used to "torture" them.

[Architect]

Yeah, I had a mate at Uni played Marillion at me until I could bear them too.....the worst form of torture ever.

[Undesired Walrus]

Seeing how most of it is from the first hand accounts of us Brits in Guantanamo, I think you can rest assured it is 100% accurate.

[Par]

Have any of you seen The Road to Guantanamo (film)? I watched it with the Stop The War society last year at uni. Was very interesting but want to know how much of it is bunk. There are plenty of conspiracies surrounding the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo - whats true? whats not?


This is interesting:

Buried away in the schedules with almost no advance publicity was Lie Lab. Making use of new techniques in magnetic resonance imaging, the programme set out to discover if its subjects were telling the truth. Last week those subjects were Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, better known as two-thirds of the Tipton Three.

That was the name given to the three young men who were picked up in Afghanistan in late 2001 by American forces and transported to Guantanamo Bay, where they were held without charges or trial for two years before being released back to Britain.

Campaigners for the men have always maintained they were innocent tourists-cum-aid workers, caught up in the invasion of Afghanistan. This was also the line of Michael Winterbottom 's film, The Road to Guantanamo. And given the tone and approach of Lie Lab, it also seemed to be a belief shared by the programme makers.

But at the end of what was actually a rather dry and laborious piece of science TV, when confronted with results that suggested he was less than forthcoming with the truth, Ahmed confessed (Rasul had refused to go through with the test) not only to visiting an Islamist training camp but also handling weapons and learning how to use an AK47.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2094030,00.html

[Good Lt]

Yeah, I had a mate at Uni played Marillion at me until I could bear them too.....the worst form of torture ever.

Gotta take issue with one thing.

I'm sorry, but Marillion is flippin' awesome.

[Undesired Walrus]

Indeed, he confessed to it because otherwise, he would never be released.

It doesn't mean he did it.

[Par]

Indeed, he confessed to it because otherwise, he would never be released. It doesn't mean he did it.


You can’t have read the article. He confessed appreciably after he’d been released and was taking part in a television programme.

[Undesired Walrus]

Well I'll be. It is somewhat thus questionable as to why he is still of member of AI.

Let's finish it off with the rest of the quote though.

None of which justifies or excuses his sub-legal and subhuman treatment in Guantanamo, but it does raise some questions about the portrayal, in some quarters of the media, of the Tipton Three as blameless heroes. The Lie Lab seemed almost embarrassed by its findings and was neither prepared, nor set up, to follow through on the story. But perhaps another TV programme might one day ask what a British citizen (or citizens) was doing at a guerrilla training camp, learning to fire weapons, in the middle of a war.

[gumboot]

I think if the account of individuals like KSM is anything to go on, Guantanamo Bay is very much a standard run-of-the-mill military POW camp, where run-of-the-mill prisoner abuse occurs (the "that tall guard with the beard is an [rule8]" kind).

The less run-of-the-mill "we're abusing you because that's what we do, and no one knows you're here" stuff was done at secret CIA prisons.

One of the reasons Guantanamo was so publicised was because ever since the start of the Afghanistan War the International Committee of the Red Crescent/Cross has been visiting the prison and monitoring the treatment of detainees. While they have consistantly raised concerns with camp staff about conditions during their visits, that's a far cry from the CIA camps that the ICRC knows nothing about.

I'd also like to point out two other things to consider:

1) It's not a good idea to mingle whether a detainee should or should not be at the prison, and how they are treated while there. The two are totally separate issues.

2) Al Qaeda, and Islamic Militants in general, teach their soldiers to always claim they have been abused and tortured in captivity, as a matter of course.

Finally, it's worth taking any stories with a grain of salt. After news came out that guards at Guantanamo had defaced a Koran by flushing it down a toilet, the Muslim world reacted with violence in which people lost their lives. It was later revealed that one of the Muslim prisoners had defaced a Koran that the prison had provided them, to allow them to continue practicing their religion.

-Gumboot

[Undesired Walrus]

To be fair to these men, they did not go out of their way to lable the American military as evil bastards.

Unless they were mearly fictionalisations, the documentary also suggests compassionate events that occured,
such as a touching moment when a troop enters the cage of a sleeping prisoner and kills a dangerous spider crawling toward his body.

[Sabrina]

I believe it's also worth pointing out that numerous guards have recounted the abuses that THEY sustain FROM the prisoners.

I read an article in Soldier magazine where the guards at Gitmo recounted being cursed at, spit on, physically attacked, and having hideous concoctions of urine, feces, blood, spit, and various other bodily fluids hurled at them on a regular basis. The guards also recounted that they were making every effort not to engage the prisoners, that they were so restrained by the effort NOT to harm the prisoners that they themselves were sometimes being harmed by the effort, as the prisoners were able to attack them, but they were constrained by their orders not to engage in return.

To put it bluntly, I think a lot of the so-called "torture tactics" are being blown WAY out of proportion by anti-war groups. That's not to say there's not an element of truth in the stories (albeit a small one), but calling it blanket torture is going way too far, IMHO. Rumors of mistreatment are just that; rumors with no evidence behind them. I don't know what goes on in the interrogation rooms, but outside of those rooms, those prisoners are treated with a lot more respect than they deserve sometimes. They are given good food, shelter, the opportunity to worship as they see fit, access to Muslim chaplains and advocates, and comfortable clothing. And they repay those kindnesses with abuse. I'll be the first to admit that we don't know everything that goes on down there, but I personally feel that the anti-war groups have blown the whole thing WAY out of proportion given what we DO know.

And let me amend that statement; I don't support any of the interrogation techniques like waterboarding that we've heard of in the news, but I have to wonder if the news is reporting it accurately or not. Given my mistrust of the mainstream media, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it came out that they'd exaggerated the tactic just a tad in order to boost ratings. If I saw it with my own two eyes though, I might have to rethink my position. I just don't know how reliable the reports are and would rather reserve judgment until there's more evidence.

[Par]

To be fair to these men, they did not go out of their way to lable the American military as evil bastards.Unless they were mearly fictionalisations, the documentary also suggests compassionate events that occured, such as a touching moment when a troop enters the cage of a sleeping prisoner and kills a dangerous spider crawling toward his body.


Indeed; and the part where a guard asks one of the prisoners to freestyle for him.

[Par]

The documentary can be seen here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-599098805530677622

There’s at least one significantly less-than-honest element of film that I’m aware of. One scene (05:45) shows the protagonists discussing the possibility of crossing over the border into Afghanistan. (The reasons given for this prospective journey are somewhat vague, but the documentary does its best to hint at either a humanitarian motivation or, oddly, merely an interest in eating very large naan breads.) In the following scene – a talking head – one of the four explains that every Pakistani they had asked had said that no invasion of Afghanistan would take place. The next scene – accompanied by a very brief subtitle showing the date as the 12th of October 2001 – shows them boarding a bus to cross the border.

What the documentary fails to mention, however, is that by the 12th of October, the invasion was already five days old.