Tipton Three 'a bit dodgey' quelle surprise, eh?

[Borboski]

Remember Michael Winterbottom's rather ropey docu-drama on the chap who'd been pulled from Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo.  I remember at the time, and saying on here, that it was very frustrating, as it didn't ask any questions at all about what they were doing there, in fact it was part of that whole indignant BLIAAR movement.

And so, I don't know if anyone saw this, but the review is in the GuardianMedia today:

Buried away in the schedules with almost no advance publicity was Lie Lab. Making use of new techniques in magnetic resonance imaging, the programme set out to discover if its subjects were telling the truth. Last week those subjects were Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, better known as two-thirds of the Tipton Three.

That was the name given to the three young men who were picked up in Afghanistan in late 2001 by American forces and transported to Guantanamo Bay, where they were held without charges or trial for two years before being released back to Britain.

Campaigners for the men have always maintained they were innocent tourists-cum-aid workers, caught up in the invasion of Afghanistan. This was also the line of Michael Winterbottom's film, The Road to Guantanamo. And given the tone and approach of Lie Lab, it also seemed to be a belief shared by the programme makers.

But at the end of what was actually a rather dry and laborious piece of science TV, when confronted with results that suggested he was less than forthcoming with the truth, Ahmed confessed (Rasul had refused to go through with the test) not only to visiting an Islamist training camp but also handling weapons and learning how to use an AK47.

None of which justifies or excuses his sub-legal and subhuman treatment in Guantanamo, but it does raise some questions about the portrayal, in some quarters of the media, of the Tipton Three as blameless heroes. The Lie Lab seemed almost embarrassed by its findings and was neither prepared, nor set up, to follow through on the story. But perhaps another TV programme might one day ask what a British citizen (or citizens) was doing at a guerrilla training camp, learning to fire weapons, in the middle of a war.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I saw this, and the tone of the program was extremely confused, as if they'd gone into it with the impression that these British lads were the stitched-up victims who were in the wrong place and then yes, embarrassed when it turns out their stories were inconsistent from one account to the next and they had indeed been attending places they shouldn't have even considered going and done things with military weapons seemingly without question.

Likewise, Guantanamo guards had clearly tortured and abused them, which all made for one confusing global fuck-up which blurs the boundaries between the goodys and the baddies.

[Steve Lampkins]

blurs the boundaries between the goodys and the baddies.

Why can't they just have skulls on their caps - it would make things so much easier.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Anti-semite!

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

They might have gone to one of the training camps not run by al-Qaeda but maybe by a more acceptable guerilla movement. A Kurdish resistance training camp perhaps. Also I suppose that not firing an AK in Afghanistan is a bit like going to Blackpool and not buying an ice cream. More seriously I'd agree with you that the Road to Guantanamo film treated them very lightly and tip toed around their motivations for being there. If anyone has read Moazzam Begg's book about being a Guantanamo prisoner it also glosses over his history and reasons for being in certain places at certain times. He went to a Kashmir guerilla training camp, but didn't really do any training and the only reason he was trying to get to Chechnya was to deliver food aid. Not that it excuses their extra judicial treatment, but it undermines their claims when they are not straight up with their motives.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

The Winterbottom film was strange. If I remember rightly, in it the Three were in Pakistan, just across the border from Afghanistan just before the invasion and decided, as you do, to go to Afghanistan, for no apparent reason. The film seemed to be saying "well of course they went to Afghanistan just before the international community launched an invasion, it was the natural thing to do". Err, no? Boborski's right, it's a symptom of people wanting to kick "Bliar", regardless of who they use to do it.

[Borboski]

Boborski's right.

Look out, this guy knows what he's talking about.