The Road to Guantanamo .....

Synopsis

The film tells the story of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul (the 'Tipton Three'); three young British men from Tipton in the West Midlands of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origins who traveled to Pakistan in September 2001 just days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA for supposedly a wedding for a friend of theirs. While staying at a mosque in Karachi, the three decided to take a rash and dangerous trip to Afghanistan to see first-hand the encounters of the region.

Mixed with interviews with the three men themselves, and archive news footage from the period, the film contains an account of the three men's experiences from their travels into Afghanistan and to their capture and imprisonment.

Traveling by van, Ruhal, Asif, and Shafiq, with two other friends, crossed the border in October, 2001 just as U.S. warplanes began attacking Taliban positions all over the country. They made it to Kandahar without incident, and later to the capital city of Kabul a few days later. After nearly a month of "lingering" aimlessly around Kabul, the Tipton Three decided to return to Pakistan. But through a combination of bad luck and the increasing chaos, the friends apparently took the wrong bus which traveled further into Afghanistan towards the north and the front-line fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance rebels.

Imprisoned at a base at Mazzar-e Sharif, they were interrogated and discovered to be of British origin. With no luggage, money, passports, and no reason or clear explanation for being in Afghanistan, Ruhal, Asif, and Shafiq were handed over to the United States military and imprisoned in a U.S. Army stockade for a month with other foreign Taliban soldiers, being regularly interrogated and occasionally beaten by American soldiers.

In January, 2002, the 'Tipton Three' were declared "enemy combatants" by the U.S. Military, and flown with dozens of other Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba where they remained for the next two years. They were held in mostly solitary confinement without charge or legal representation.

The rest of the film shows several scenes depicting their alleged beatings during interrogation, the use of alleged torture techniques such as 'stress positions' and attempts to extract forced confessions of involvement with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The isolation continued from the Camp X-Ray where they were held as well as another camp during the two years they were there where they were subjected to more questioning by U.S. Army and CIA interrogators. Because of the devastating 9/11 attacks committed by Al-Qaeda on U.S. soil, the Americans believe that Al-Qaeda is the one acting illegally and its members and affiliates deserve absolutely no protection or special treatment under any international laws.

The Tipton Three were all released without charge and without any compensation for their imprisonment in 2004. The three were flown back to England where, one year later, they went back to Pakistan for the wedding they planned to attend in the first place.