IVAW Recommends: 'You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo'

Film Review by Sarah Edkins, B.S. Film Studies

You Don’t Like the Truth, a new documentary by Canadian filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez, tells the story of Omar Khadr, the 15-year-old Arab-Canadian detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The film will be screened at New York City’s Film Forum on 209 W. Houston St. for a one-week engagement from Sept. 28 – Oct. 4 at 1, 3, 6:10, 8:10, and 10:10pm daily.

Côté and Henriquez’s film builds on surveillance footage of Khadr’s interrogation by Canadian intelligence in 2003, recently declassified by Canadian officials after the supreme court there ruled that the interrogation violated Khadr’s constitutional rights as a citizen under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The footage is contextualized by interviews with reporters, lawyers, activists, and officials familiar with the case, as well as infamous U.S. Army prison guard Damien “the Monster” Corsetti and Khadr’s cellmates, including Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes (both of whom have appeared alongside IVAW member Christopher Arendt in panels and films about Gitmo). The directors make odd use of space and time in framing these interviews, using picture-in-picture techniques and graphic displays of the video controls and calibration to suggest that each subject is watching the surveillance footage and commenting in real-time about Omar’s long and murky battle with the U.S. Military.

Omar Khadr is a first-generation Canadian of Egyptian and Palestinian descent. His father, Ahmed Khadr, traveled to Afghanistan as an aid worker during the Soviet Invasion of the 1980s, where he may have made contacts with majors players in what would later become Al-Qaeda. The Khadr family traveled regularly between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Canada throughout the years to follow. In 2002, 15-year-old Omar was inside a compound believed to house Al-Qaeda or other militants. An extensive firefight ensured, from which Khadr emerged the only surviving “enemy combatant.” U.S. forces allege that Omar threw a hand grenade at the American unit, killing SFC Christopher Speer. Because Speer was a trained medic, his death constituted a war crime.  The badly wounded Khadr was thus taken into custody, shipped first to Bagram and then to Guantanamo, where Omar, his cellmates, and captors testify he endured intense torture and pain.

The film presents much evidence of Omar’s innocence, makes a case for self-defense, and exposes a number of holes and deficiencies in official interrogation tactics and the case against him. It may leave us with more questions than answers. But most importantly, it highlights the reality on which Omar’s Guantanamo cellmates, high-ranking Canadian Foreign Affairs officials, UN Representatives, and self-described conservative U.S. military lawyer can agree: Omar Khadr, whether a radical Islamist or a bright young translator, a perpetrator of war crimes or a victim of them, was ultimately a child. This fact becomes heartbreakingly apparent as we watch him sit and cry, alone in the interrogation room, for his mother (!يا أمي, يا أمي).  And as a child, he is indubitably a victim—of radicalism, of militarism, of hate and of apathy.

You Don’t Like the Truth takes a critical look at the complexities of the Global War on Terror, a defunct military legal system, and a web of ever-changing alliances. It forces us to question how we, as a nation among the strongest advocates for human rights worldwide, can also be among the greatest offenders. We have seen it time and time again in Iraq, Afghanistan, and on our own soil. In protecting our values of freedom, justice, and democracy, are we also violating them?  Although the film may be overwhelming and difficult for some veterans—indeed, for anyone—to watch, it is a story essential to understanding and changing our own approach to national security.