| | Tribeca Film Probes Death of Afghan Cabby Beaten by U.S. Guards Bloomberg
04/26/2007
By Rick Warner
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Alex Gibney's father, a former Naval interrogator who questioned Japanese prisoners in World War II, was furious to learn that U.S. soldiers were torturing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"He felt it was basically undermining the rule of law, which is what he fought to defend in World War II and what we are allegedly fighting to defend in the war on terror," said Gibney, whose film about the torture scandal, "Taxi to the Dark Side," premieres Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
Frank Gibney, a noted journalist and author, died last year, six weeks after asking his son to unhook him from an oxygen machine so he could express his outrage about the torture. His taped comments provide a poignant coda to this disturbing documentary by the director of the Oscar-nominated ``Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.''
I spoke with Gibney, 53, last week at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York.
Warner: The movie centers on the torture and subsequent death of a young Afghan taxi driver, who was falsely accused of being a terrorist in 2002. Who was he and what happened to him?
Gibney: He was 22 years old, had a young daughter and had never spent a night away from home. He was picked up by Afghan militia, accused of taking part in a rocket attack on a U.S. base and sent to Bagram prison outside of Kabul. Five days after he arrived, he was dead.
Warner: What killed him?
Gibney: A quick investigation determined he died of natural causes. But very mysteriously an autopsy report turned up and it revealed that the Army coroner had marked the cause of death as homicide.
No Murder Charge
Warner: Has anybody been charged with his death?
Gibney: No. A number of people were charged with maltreatment and assault, but not murder. And none of them were higher-ups.
Many people contributed to his death. He was shackled for days in a standing position where the blood flowed to his legs, and there was another procedure called a peroneal strike, where they would knee him near the thigh. This was done hundreds of times; his legs turned into pulp and a pulmonary embolism traveled to his heart.
Warner: This happened long before the revelations about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Why haven't we heard more about it?
Gibney: That's a good question. The New York Times did some stories about it, but nobody really connected the dots. What happened at these prisons wasn't the fault of a few bad apples. This was a systematic policy of detention and interrogation that went amok.
Prisoner in Diaper
Warner: Wasn't there one case where they humiliated a retarded prisoner?
Gibney: Yes, at Bagram there was a guy who was literally eating his own feces. He had to be kept in a diaper. But they told the interrogators, "Don't fall for that, it's an al-Qaeda trick."
Warner: Are the prison guards and interrogators who've been charged with mistreatment being used as scapegoats?
Gibney: I think so. It's too simple to say that they're victims because many of them did horrible things, and they need to be held accountable. What's shocking is that nobody in charge of these policies has been prosecuted or held to account in any way, shape or form. That's the really horrendous thing.
Warner: The TV series "24" shows a lot of graphic prisoner torture. Do you see any connection between that series and what happened at these prisons?
Gibney: I don't think there's a causal connection, but I do think that ``24'' plays a role in desensitizing Americans to this whole idea of torture.
Bad Information
Warner: Isn't it true that torture rarely leads to useful information?
Gibney: There's a whole body of literature that shows that torture doesn't yield reliable information. It also corrupts the rule of law. Once you begin to torture a little bit, you start to torture all the time. And it undermines our standing throughout the world, and actually makes us more likely to be hit by terrorists.
Warner: We didn't torture prisoners in World War II, so why now?
Gibney: Because back then, our interrogators didn't lose sight of the fact that their prisoners were human beings.
Warner: Your next documentary is on gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson. What would Hunter say about "Taxi to the Dark Side"?
Gibney: I think he'd like it. Hunter used his typewriter a little bit like a machine gun; his words were bullets that were meant to penetrate the corruption of political officials.
For information about the Tribeca Film Festival, call +1-212-941-2400 or see http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org .
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