In the wrong place at the wrong time
Now that I go to bed early (because waking up is hard to do), I’ve had to swear off late-night TV. No more monologues from the triumvirate, or goofy walk-ons from the cinematic butterflies that have a new movie to flog. Except that once in a while, sleep remains elusive and I’ll find the two remotes needed to get a picture up on the wall above our bed. Like last night, when I stumbled across a documentary.
First of all, this film has been out for over two years, but there is no chance that the major English language networks on our continent would touch it. I happened to find the sub-titled version of The Road To Guantanamo on the French Radio-Canada system, after midnight on a Sunday night; about as safe from audience numbers as you can be. Somehow, I doubt this subject would play very well in the “heartland of America”, or wherever it is that Ford trucks go for recreation.
There’s a percentage of re-creation here, which is not the same thing as recreation, particularly if you happen to be among the several hundred people currently held by the US at their detention facility on the southeastern tip of Cuba. In the great tradition of democratic republics, there is no need for these prisoners to face a judge and/or jury; they’ve been “tried and found guilty” by a whole other process, nebulous to anyone that hasn’t received military training. It seems that without a uniform, you are not a soldier, therefore you have no rights. End of synopsis.
What the film does show anyone who cares enough to watch is that very few stories are simple. Here, three young men from a small town in the central part of the United Kingdom decide to travel to Pakistan for a family wedding. Along the way, they err in judgement; the decision to “go and see what a war zone looks like” ends with them being captured and turned over to US authorities as potential terrorist fighters. If the other 772 people held in Gitmo since late 2001 were captured as easily, then one has to wonder why there’s still a need for troops over there, because these were about as far from belligerent combatants as one is likely to find. Just shallow young men in the wrong place at an entirely wrong time.
After three years in detention, the protagonists were released “without charge and without any compensation”. In the vernacular, shit happens. Time to get on with their lives; they do, as the film shows them finally arriving for the family wedding, a few years later than originally planned.
Sometime in the future, there will be questions raised over how justice is served in a brave new world. This film will stand as an example.
