We went to see
this documentary this evening at the Mayfair. It will be shown again on Monday at 7 p.m. and I recommend seeing it.
The Guantanamo Trap is the story of four people whose lives were irretrievably changed by the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after 9/11. Two of them were American Army lawyers; one was a young German man accused of being a terrorist; one is a Spanish lawyer responsible for prosecuting the terrorists accused of the 2004 rail bombings in Madrid.
One of the American lawyers, Matt Diaz, leaked the list of people being held at Guantanamo to a woman lawyer who he understood was trying to get habeas corpus rights for those prisoners, because he thought that what was happening in the prison was wrong. Instead she gave the list to the authorities and he was imprisoned for 6 months and given a dishonorable discharge and is in the process of losing everything (his house, car, etc.). I could only describe his story as deeply sad, and wish that he had had more cunning to not get caught and suffer for his (very proper) moral convictions.
The other lawyer, Judge Advocate Diane Beaver, wrote a memo which eventually went all the way to the Secretary of Defense for authorization, which indicated which types of questioning of prisoners were in line with international treaties forbidding torture. Her recommendations included some forms of questioning, such as stripping prisoners naked, exposing them to animals like dogs which they might have phobias about, and sleep deprivation, which I would regard as torture. She also sat in on (separated by glass) many questionings at the prison camp.
So obviously a nasty piece of work, right? She saw herself as a loyal American who wanted to a) save her country and b) ensure torture didn't happen. She didn't suffer in the same way as Diaz, but was clearly scapegoated as a villain with all her superiors who didn't sign the memo getting off scot-free. And more to the point, in my opinion, she should never had been ordered to give her opinion on that topic or write that memo. She was serving at Guantanamo, in an atmosphere of us vs them where there was a strong psychological imperative to allow as much leeway as possible in methods of questioning. She was not as far as I could tell trained in human rights or in interrogation techniques or the morality of interrogation. She could not possibly be dispassionate or properly consider the issues involved. She was naive morally and politically and was used by much nastier men to justify torture.
Murat Kurnaz was a young German man who converted to Islam and then visited Pakistan. Shortly before he was about to leave, he was picked up by security forces and accused of being a terrorist. He was shipped to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo, where he was held without charges, interrogated constantly, often refused sleep, and tortured (for example, being held by his arms from the ceiling for four days). He was finally released when German Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened. There were many suspicions initially of him, but they turned out to all be unfounded. There was no evidence that he took part in any terrorist planning or acts. But he lost four years of his life in the most horrible way possible.
And, because of his case against the Madrid bombing suspects, Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boye was led into a broader issues and finally a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials for allegedly covering up the torture of inmates in Guantanamo Bay -- including talking to Kurnaz about his experiences and considering calling on Beaver as a witness. (So far, the prosecution has been blocked by the US government.)
As a story of people caught in the Guantanamo trap, this movie worked really well. It was a fascinating character study of each of them. However there were notable holes: the description of Kurnaz' background was really sketchy (was he a German citizen or not?). The Madrid bombing trial and what happened to the accised wasn't explained, and the link from that to the prosecution of the Americans was unclear. And if you didn't know about the fascist regime in Spain, you'd be wondering how a man who served 7 years for supposedly abetting kidnapping could be a government prosecutor (Boye says he was completely innocent of the charge; the fact that he was tortured by the police at that time has lent urgency to his fight against the US government).
But this film does raise some fascinating issues re morality and how it can get tossed in "wartime" and how people can ensure it is upheld. And the characters are fascinating.
(And as a film? Good sound, interesting backgrounds, excellent cinematography, no annoying camera tricks. And they did a remarkable job working around not being able to film the prison camp itself.)
More info:
http://www.guantanamotrap.com/the-film
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I rest my case. Vintage Ads roadtrip and dinner meet-up!
(K for Kosher, V H for Va'ad Harabbonim, Council of Rabbis; from the Rabbinical Council of New England)
