By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent Published: 22 February 2006
An award-winning film director who reconstructed scenes of torture and abuse at Guantanamo Bay has called for the immediate closure of the US-run camp.
Michael Winterbottom's film shows prisoners in orange jumpsuits beaten, manacled to floors and subjected to defeaning music in solitary confinement. It tells the story of Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, the so-called Tipton Three, who set off for Pakistan in September 2001 and ended up in Camp Delta, in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay. They were released without char-ge after more than two years' imprisonment.
Mr Winterbottom said: "What's most shocking isn't the torture or the shackling, it's that Guantanamo Bay exists at all. I think it should be closed down, and last week the United Nations said it should be closed down."
He criticised the Government's "perverse" refusal to come to the aid of the eight British residents still incarcerated in the camp in Cuba. Mr Winterbottom added: "There are still 500 people in Guantanamo. They are still experiencing all the things that we filmed."
The White House appears oblivious to the growing international outcry in recent weeks about conditions in Guantanamo Bay.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, sidestepped an opportunity yesterday to support his cabinet colleague Peter Hain, who called for closure last week.
Mr Straw said on Radio 4: "I am absolutely clear the US has no intention of maintaining a gulag in Guantanamo Bay. They want to see the situation resolved and they would like it other than it is. However, that is the situation that they have."
He said the US was reducing the numbers held there, but added: "The problem is what to do with those that are left, and that is a matter which the US administration are going to have to take their own decisions on, and frankly I'm not going to second-guess the decisions they make."
Mr Winterbottom's film, The Road to Guantanamo, mixes interviews with the Tipton Three with dramatised reconstructions of how they ended up in US military hands. They say that they decided to travel to Afghanistan after hearing a preacher in a Pakistani mosque call for volunteers to help with conducting aid work in the neighbouring country. When the war started they were trapped and ended up being captured by Northern Alliance fighters who handed them over to US military forces.
The film won the Silver Bear award for direction at the Berlin Film Festival last week and will be shown on Channel 4 next month. Four or five distributors are considering showing the film in the US.
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full: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article346939.ece
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam