Taxi to the Dark Side

Plot synopsis:
The documentary background to the death of Dilawar, an Afghan peanut farmer, who gave up farming to become a taxi driver, and who died after several days of beating at Bagram detention center.
Dilawar left his home of Yakubi in eastern Afghanistan in the autumn of 2002, investing his family money in a new taxi to make money in a larger city. On 1 December 2002 he and three passengers were handed over to US military officials by a local Afghan warlord, accused of organising an attack on Camp Salerno. The warlord was later found guilty of the attack himself, but had been ingratiating himself (for $1000 per person) by handing over alleged terrorists.
Dilawar was held at the prison at Bagram Air Base, and given the prisoner number BT421. Chained from the ceiling, he received multiple attacks on his thighs, a standard technique viewed as "permissible" and non-life-threatening. It is likely that the severe attack caused a blood clot which then killed him. His official death certificate created by the US military to pass to his family, with his body, was marked "homicide". Medical conclusion stated that Dilawar's legs were "pulpified" and, had he lived, would have required amputation.
The film explores the background of increasingly sanctioned "torture" since 9/11 in contravention of the Geneva Convention and looks at the exposures of Abu Graib.
Interviews include Tim Golden of the New York Times who brought the case into the international spotlight, and Moazzam Begg, a British citizen imprisoned at the same time, and witness to the events. Military interviewees include Damien Corsetti the main interogator, and Sgt Anthony Morden. Cpt Christopher Beiring explains how he was the only person charged (charged with derliction of duty).
The documentary claims that of the over 83,000 people incarcerated by US forces in Afghanistan up to 2007, 93 percent were captured by local militiamen and exchanged for US bounty payments. Also that 105 detainees had died in captivity and that 37 of these deaths had been officially classified as homicides up to 2007.
The film also looks at Guantanamo Bay and how the same techniques were implemented there.

Tags: violence, cruelty, murder

Review:
Using the case of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who were tortured to death by American interrogators in Bagram prison as the starting point, the film chronicles the atrocities committed by the Bush administration in the name of American people and an ill-defined 'war on terror'.The film is written, directed and narrated by Alex Gibney, son of a high-ranking naval officer who was an interrogator in World War II.
A great American and a true patriot, Frank Gibney's final disappointment of what became of the great nation of the United States in the hands of a few liars is heart-wrenching.There is not a single frame in the film that is not supported by hard evidence.
There is something you need to know about this film: it is not about real insurgents or terrorists or about real soldiers, and it is certainly not an anti-American film.It is about how senior military and civilian officials demand results from their subordinates, even if the results are to be obtained by unconscionable, immoral, and illegal means, up to, and including, torture and murder.
They are mostly low-ranking enlisted men and women, privates and sergeants, almost none of whom speak with any proficiency the language of the detainees they're interrogating.So, imagine the scenario: senior officials demanding intelligence, no matter how it's obtained; unqualified interrogators using whatever means they can think of to satisfy their superiors' demands; and MP prison guards who have the power of life and death over their detainees, with almost no restrictions on what they can do to them.
If your kids are MPs, interrogators, or just in the military, advise them always to watch their backs around those people.This may be a disturbing film for civilians, but it won't include many surprises if you've served in the armed forces, or on a police force, or in a prison.
With this as the starting point, this documentary tells the story of the role of "torture" in the war on terror, from Abu Ghraid to Guantanamo.Having put Gibney's documentary on Enron as one of my ten favourite films of 2005, I eagerly took up the opportunity the UK (and much of Europe) had to catch this on television ahead of the full release in the US in 2008.
As a result this film is about the use of "torture" against terrorist suspects, specifically focusing on the United States.The reader may be wondering why the focus (in the title) on Dilawar.
The morality of the use of torture is not black and white and of course the usual "ticking time bomb" scenario is thrown up; the film does counter this by suggesting that the weekly scenarios in Fox's 24 are not the norm (to say the least) but the best answer to most of the moral questions are simply to refer back to a taxi driver who died after five days in captivity with horrific injuries  the film doesn't say he was innocent but it doesn't need to  nobody suggests he was evil or a key player either, but yet he is dead.
Certainly a clip of Bush talking about "suspected terrorists" who have died, or as he says "put it this way  they're no longer a problem to the United States"; the fact that he acknowledges they are "suspects" rather than convicts but yet sees their death as a good thing says it all.Considering this issue is everywhere in the media, Gibney does very well to structure his film to build it from the ground up.
Not only does he use the words of the Bush administration against them ("the only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people") but he also details the wider political picture beyond the blame that was dumped onto Lynndie England, Charles Graner and others.
The biggest challenge with this material is to keep it as a valid piece of work even as the topic grows daily and that many will be tired of hearing about it  just this last week or so we have seen more debate and also the CIA deleting old tapes of interrogations (tapes that Bush has "no recollection" of existing); however Gibney brings the film to a close well, making it feel like something that can stand still and still work  the personal touch of his late father's comments at the end (himself a WWII Navy interrogator) talking about how "we" should be different than "them", making for a suitable summing up of why the film is important.Another strong documentary from Gibney despite the lack of balance and the challenges with the topic.
Although it reveals nothing new about the torture and degrading techniques we've become accustomed to over the last three years, it puts politician's faces and statements in context with a "real" victim and a name: young Afghan Taxi driver Dilawar, who was arrested at a checkpoint for alleged involvement in a rocket attack.
What's the bigger picture, the one that's usually glossed over, and the reason Discovery deems this documentary "controversial"?Alex Gibney dismantles "Torture the American way" just like he did the Enron scandal in "Enron: The smartest guys in the room", from the inside to the bigger inside, like a Russian doll.
This tells the story of an Afghani taxi driver that is mistakenly picked up as a Taliban supporter, but before they find out he was innocent, he has been beaten to death by his American torturers.This film has interviews from all of the guards that were responsible, JAG officers, FBI people, CIA agents on the ground etc.
While I couldn't be more sympathetic to the bind we've placed our young men and women in, the last thing I wanted to hear from an individual who's been convicted of torture and "wrongful death" (labeled a homicide by the coroner) is "I'm financially ruined." The moral quandary raised by the film isn't nearly answered until the final credits roll.And where is Congress?
Dilawar, an innocent taxi driver from a poor farm in Afghanistan, was swept up by three other Afghan soldiers and sent to Bagram prison, where along with other supposed terrorists or terrorist collaborators was tortured (in his case especially in brutal fashion, as we learn in graphic description from those who participated first-hand), and died from the trauma.His death was a controversy, but not one that ever got the kind of attention it deserved; until this documentary I never even heard of Dilawar or even much about Bagram prison.
It's almost frightening to forget the amount of footage available with these men like Rumsfeld and Gonzalez and Cheney where they not only admit to being fine with torture tactics - and whether or not it's psychological torture or not is besides the point as ALL torture IS torture, albeit a facet that Gibney brilliantly chronicles in the history of the CIA to its 'logical' extension in recent years - but set it up in legal wrangling so as to not get it any trouble for what they've done which is, of course, breaking Geneva conventions and whatnot.If I sound like I'm sounding bias with this, then you should leave this review right now.
Gibney presents all the information with the bluntness that's required, with testimony, footage from press conferences and commissions (i.e. that cringe-inducing bit with Gonzalez where he has a horrible pause when trying to answer a simple question about whether or not to condone torture), and it's presented lucidly, edited for a cumulative effect and with the skill of a filmmaker in total trust with his subject(s) to take all of the pieces into a whole that shakes one to the core.And all of this would be powerful enough to make an impact, but with the recent explosion of news coverage on water-boarding - and that the CIA has admitted to torturing three subjects - Taxi to the Dark Side remains startlingly relevant.
From the tragedy of Dilawar to the tragedy of Abu Gharyb, which was like Salo turned into as shockingly real as could never be imaginable, the Bush administration has put the US into even more danger than ever before by resorting to the lowest form of humanity, condoning acts to the soldiers that sixty years ago would never be committed in the harshest of circumstances on our side.
Dilawar, the Afghan taxi driver, was essentially beaten to death by American soldiers in the Bagram prison.
Gibney, who was responsible previously for the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, presents interviews with some of the American soldiers responsible for Dilawar's death.
Other talking heads clarify the fact that the "gloves are off" policy by US authorities following 9/11/01 goes back to Cheney, approved by Bush, carried out with gusto by Rumsfeld, and sent directly down the line to the low-ranking and inexperienced people whose behavior after the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged was claimed by authorities to be that of people on the "night shift" or "a few bad apples." This film thoroughly disproves that claim.Gibney shows how the US administration has become willing to blatantly disregard the rule of law, domestic as well as international, to fight their "war on terror" in ways that involved extreme cruelty and murder.
Senator McCain is shown in the film as a man who opposes torture for good reason: because he experienced it during his years in a North Vietnam prison.Another issue: American has a developed a culture of guilty-as-charged, of hysterical attacks on imagined enemies.
A Dark Side talking head says that there has never been such a person captured, and suggests that if there were, such a person would have the commitment to die rather than reveal information about his plot.I do not know if torture never gets you information, though the assertion that insinuating oneself into the confidence of a prisoner is more effective makes sense.
What is clear enough from Gibney's powerful and disturbing film (which contains many images not for the squeamish) is that the torture and wrongful imprisonment and lawlessness of the US as a nation post-9/11 indicate a country that has become very cruel and very stupid.Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com recounts that at a post-screening Q&A when Gibney was asked what he would like his film to accomplish, he said "I hope it provokes some rage." "Well," says O'Hehir, "it worked on me." May it work on everyone who sees it..
I am sure these "soldiers" had no intention of killing themselves in the blasts but the objective is clear, cause chaos and bloodshed then blame your enemy.Another "reviewer" that states he served in Iraq had this to say: "It's War The liberals will have you believe that America is and always will be the cause of so much unrest in the world today.
Had the documentary given any attention to what resulted on the battlefield from any intelligence obtained, then HBO's anti-war meaning would have been lost."So America is not "the cause of so much unrest in the world today?" Then who is?With the preemptive and some would say illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, millions have died, mostly civilians and as a result, the credibility of America has suffered considerably.
Did they save American lives on the battlefield or at home?"The documentary did in fact show the yield of torturous interrogations.
As a side note Khalid Sheikh Mohammed interrogations are mentioned as a source in the 9/11 Commission report 211 times.Saving "American lives" is no more important than saving anyone else's and history has proved that information taken under torture is totally unreliable.I find it hard to understand how anyone would not want their armed forces to perform with the highest principles of bravery and honour.
"Taxi to the Dark Side" is an exceptionally meticulous documentary that takes the case of an Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by interrogators at Bagram base in 2006, and puts it in the context of American anti-terror policy.
One interview, one document at a time, the fog of legal and moral ambiguity is dispelled, until televised denials by administration officials shrink to nothing next to a stark red pillar of human suffering.Maybe our culture won't let us believe that the good guys can do such things to innocent people.
And such is the case with the Academy Award winner TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE.The story starts and ends with the murder of Dilawar, a taxi cab driver in Afghanistan who is mistakenly picked up by U.S. forces and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for interrogation.
Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, 'Taxi to the dark side' portrays a disturbing; in depth look of highly questionable interrogation practices used by US military guards on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq & Guantanamo Bay in the aftermath of 9/11.Produced, Directed, Written & Narrated by Alex Gibney, the film begins with the tale of young innocent Dilawar who was working as a taxi driver in Afghanistan.
With shocking photos, footage, expert commentary & interviews with several soldiers stationed at prisons in Afghanistan & Iraq the documentary also shows that how certain bad apples of US military clearly violated the humanitarian rules outlined in Geneva conventions & treated these prisoners in the most savage ways using severe & cruel inhuman techniques such as sodomising, stripping humiliation, sleep deprivation, electrocute the testicles, ceiling handcuffing & many other atrocities in Bagram, Abu Ghraib prisons.
# How to remove this dark side from the minds of chaos stricken military?"Torturing people is not the best way to get information.
This outstanding film, the Oscar winner for Best Documentary this year, is a clear indictment that the Bush Administration should be held accountable for war crimes.Unfortunately, as it is also pointed out in the film, they managed to insert some clause of immunity in a law.
The fact that they did this - for the administration, not the soldiers who actually carried out the prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay - is a clear indication that they knew what they were ordering was inhumane and against the Geneva Convention.The taxi driver that was the starting point of this film lasted only five months in prison before he was dead.
First I will write about how it's constructed and the information it provides, then I will write my own personal response to the film.Alex Gibney's "Taxi to the Dark Side" is a tell-all about how the U.S. government's position on torture really operates.
"Taxi to the Dark Side" is a tad long, but Gibney has a lot to say.Now for my thoughts..."You put people in a crazy situation and people do crazy things."--one of the former interrogators interviewed.Indeed, the times we live in are "crazy," especially for the armed forces fighting overseas.
Second, given the winners get to write history, we have a deluded mindset that war crimes are things other people commit, not us.Alex Gibney has tried to send a message about America's hypocritical sacrifice of longstanding principles by focusing on a single man, a taxi driver tortured to death by American forces in Afghanistan.
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield are directly responsible for the official policy allowing torture, increasing the number of people who have never faced war crimes charges but should do so.It is confronting, saddening and maddening to watch.
Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) **** (out of 4) Excellent, Oscar-winning documentary taking a look at the use of torture during the Bush administration.
The documentary takes a look at a couple men who were beaten to death at the Bagram Prison including an Afghan taxi driver who picked up three passengers and was never heard of again until he was murdered inside the prison.
(This film review coincides with John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band 80's hit single "On The Dark Side")"Taxi To The Dark Side" is calling now, everything is real You will know how sick you'll feel From out of the shadows, this documentary feels like a bad dream Makes Americans feel so crazy, makes them look so meanAin't nothing gonna save us from torture that is blind When American brutalize, they have crossed that line Taxi To The Dark Side, oh yeah Taxi To The Dark Side, oh yeah OK, that's enough!
What this wickedly dark musical adaptation is trying to inform you is that documentary filmmaker's Alex Gibney's Oscar-winning documentary "Taxi To The Dark Side" takes a cerebral investigative journey into American soldiers brutalizing innocent Afghani victims through torturous interrogative techniques.
The real-life narrative focus of this documentary though is on the torture and murder of an innocent Afghanistan taxi driver by American military interrogators.
This disturbing documentary follows the case of Dilawar, an Afghani taxi driver, who is captured first by his countrymen and turned over to the United States military for interrogation.
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.Writing this review in 2015, the material in this film are already a bit dated.
Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, this Alex Gibney film probes into the use of torture by the US as part of their War on Terror.
Bush or the current fighting in the Middle East, TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE is a deliberate and meticulous examination of torture used as a weapon in the war against terror and proof positive that the Bush administration had full knowledge and of it being employed at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons.
Directed by filmmaker Alex Gibney, the film examines the USA's policy on torture and interrogation in general, specifically the CIA's use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation, by showcasing the story of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, whom was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention at the Parwan Detention Facility, during the first years of War in Afghanistan (2001-2014).