Following 9-11, a number of young men were swept up in the rush to find the perpetrators. One such was Binyam Mohamed, a U K resident and recent convert to Islam, who undertook the conversion in an effort to overcome a drug habit. At the time of 9-11 he was visiting Afghanistan, he attempted to return to the U K but could not, he then fled to Pakistan but was arrested at the airport with a false passport and held. Over the next few years he was sent to various countries and tortured.
He ended up in the U S Guantanamo military prison in Cuba, where our most dangerous suspected terrorists are kept. To prepare for his trial he was assigned a military and civilian team to assist his defense. The military member in his team was an African American woman. Yvonne Bradley was a well respected JAG (Judge Advocate General), part of the elite legal wing of officers who investigate, prosecute, and defend those accused of crimes in the military. Because Binyan was to be tried in a military court, he needed this representation.
At first Yvonne was afraid of Mr Mohamed, because of the crimes he was charged with, but gradually lost that fear as she began to doubt the case against him. It became clear that, because of the torture, Binyam said whatever the questioners appeared to want. She went on record and risked her military career to publicly explain why the charges against the prisoner made no sense. The country was willing to risk what we believed in because we believed that torture would elicit the truth, in fact it seemed to have the opposite effect.
This film can’t help but make you proud that there are people who will defend what is right, even if it means a cost to themselves. I highly recommend the film.