http://www.channel4.com/film/newsfeatures/microsites/G/guantanamo/
On 2/23/06, Colin Brace <cb at lim.nl> wrote:
> Horrors of Camp Delta are exposed by British victims
>
> 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.
>
> [..]
>
> full: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article346939.ece
>
> --
> Colin Brace
> Amsterdam
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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