A couple of weeks after al-Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington, Mohamedou Slahi disappears following a family wedding in Nouakchott, Mauritania. He is transported to Jordan, Afghanistan, then Guantanamo Bay; is interrogated by the FBI, the CIA and the US military. He has background. A cousin had been ‘spiritual adviser’ to Bin Laden and had phoned and sent him money. When arrested, Slahi wipes his phone. Ten years earlier, he had briefly joined the Mujahedin to resist, with US support, Russian occupation. The Americans suspect him of recruiting the al-Qaeda personnel who carried out the 9-11 attacks.
Macdonald, a director of docs and reality-based features (Whitney, Touching the Void) here impressively dramatizes Slahi’s prison diaries, which were protected by lawyer-client confidentiality. Following 9-11, President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld want executions and Rumsfeld authorizes specific forms of torture to obtain confessions. Jodie Foster plays Slahi’s lawyer pressing a habeus corpus writ that he cannot be held without charge. Benedict Cumberbatch is the stiff but principled military prosecutor preparing the case for the death penalty. Tahar Rahim, as Mohamedou Slahi, holds it all together as more than the point of contention but a person of extraordinary faith, humanity, endurance, and humour.
