Amnesty International Aalborg invites all to watch a widely discussed and acclaimed film “The Road to Guantanamo”. After the film you can take part in a short workshop.
When: Wednesday, 20th April, 15.00-17.00
Where: Amnesty International Aalborg, Danmarksgade 7, Aalborg
Free entrance
The Road to Guantanamo is a British 2006 docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross about the incarceration of three British detainees (the ‘Tipton Three’) at a detainment camp in Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. It premiered at the Berlinale on 14 February 2006 and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The film documents the personal accounts of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul (the ‘Tipton Three’);[1][3][4] three young British men from Tipton in the West Midlands of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origins who travelled to Pakistan in September 2001 just days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA, ostensibly to a wedding of 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.
Imprisoned at a base at Mazar-e Sharif, they were interrogated and discovered to be of British origin. With no luggage, money, passports, Ruhal, Asif, and Shafiq were handed over to the United States military and imprisoned in a US army stockade for a month with other prisoners, being regularly interrogated and occasionally beaten by US soldiers.
In January 2002, the ‘Tipton Three’ were declared “enemy combatants” by the US military, and flown with dozens of other alleged 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 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.
The film documents the personal accounts 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 travelled to Pakistan in September 2001 just days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA, ostensibly to a wedding of a friend of theirs. While staying at a mosque in Karachi, the three decided to take a rash and dangerous trip to Afghanistan and end up in the middle of the fight between The Taliban and the Northern Alliance soldiers.
Imprisoned at a base at Mazar-e Sharif, they were interrogated and discovered to be of British origin. With no luggage, money, passports, Ruhal, Asif, and Shafiq were handed over to the United States military, imprisoned in a US army stockade and eventually transported, together with dozens of other alleged 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.
In 2004 the Tipton Three were all released without charge and flown back to England without any compensation for their imprisonment.
After the film we would like to invite you to take part in a short workshop on torture, during which you will be able to experience one of the common torture methods known as wall-standing. The participation will of course be voluntary and taking place in safe conditions.
We hope to see you this Wednesday.
