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02/20/2006:

"UK police arrest stars of award-winning film "The Road to Guantanamo" under the Prevention of Terrorism Act"

Citing the "Prevention of Terrorism" act, British Police have arrested and interrogated three of the stars of the award-winning film "The Road to Guantanamo", together with the three ex-Guantanomo detainees on whose story the film is based.

Acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom ("A Cock and Bull Story", "24 Hour Party People", "Welcome to Sarajevo") had been showing the film at the Berlin Film Festival, where it has won a number of top awards.

"The Road to Guantanamo" traces the true story of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, three Muslim friends from Birmingham who were picked up as aliens in Afghanistan by US forces and ended up in Guantanamo for three years, where they suffered brutal and humiliating treatment.

Extensive interrogation established that they had no connection with al-Qaida, and despite their plight being ignored by British authorities, eventually they were returned home. The UK media covered live the return of these "Suspected terrorists" and the massive police convoy that brought them in to Ventral London for questioning. Their release after the UK police also found they had no connection with terrorism was, naturally, hardly mentioned.
craigmurray.co.uk


'The Road to Guantanamo' Film Releasing Soon
...Winterbottom's film tells the true life "horror story" of four young men of Pakistan origin -- one of them now presumed dead -- who travel to Karachi, then on to a village near Faisalabad in Punjab, where one of them, Asif Iqbal, is to marry a bride chosen for him by his mother.

The group gathers shortly before the wedding. Then on the spur of the moment they embark on a well-intentioned but unwise escapade into Afghanistan to help victims of the war -- just days before American bombardments start in September 2001.

The three young men from Tipton, near Birmingham in England, soon recognise the folly of the venture but turning back proves impossible. Almost certainly betrayed by locals they are swept up by Coalition allies, and shunted into a container which ends up being machine-gunned by Northern Alliance troops led by General Dostum's forces, killing many inside.

Taken into American custody, the three young men -- Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul -- get beaten up and abused before being dispatched to Guantanamo Bay for two years and finally being released without charge and flown home to Britain.

Winterbottom's film, much of it skillfully shot at locations in Iran, weaves commentary from the three lads between credible re-enactments of their nightmare, and offers an astonishing indictment of Guantanamo, and the ruthless way it operates.