The revelations of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and John Kiriakou have allowed the world to know about the sly and insidious turn Western governments took following 9/11. From torture programs to mass surveillance to extrajudicial captures and killings, it has become clear how far these governments have poured away their own values and beliefs.
Despite their best efforts to reveal the truth, whistleblowers, leakers, journalists can only show so much against the backdrop of entire governments. In the years since, hundreds, if not thousands of stories remain to be told about those most affected by these illegal and immoral measures, and Phantom Parrot, a new documentary by director Kate Stonehill, adds one more to the record.
Stonehill and Muhammad Rabbani, the managing director of CAGE—an organization that specializes in supporting those people who have been victims of torture and abuse primarily at the hands of the U.S. government and its allies—join host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. The trio delve into the narrative of the documentary and explore the context behind the imperative to support innocent people ensnared by the faulty U.S. and U.K. national security apparatus.
The main crux of the film focuses on the case of Ali Al-Marri, a Qatari man who was detained, tortured and abused in the U.S. for over 10 years. Al-Marri, as Rabbani describes, is a victim of a massive dragnet program by the U.S. and CIA that saw hundreds of innocent Arab men rounded up in the time after 9/11. “It was just the idea that if we have this person and they are sufficiently pressured, they're broken down, basically tortured, then at some point they're going to make an admission. And using that admission, we [the U.S.] will get a result. We've caught a terrorist and we can show that our war against terrorism is winning,” Rabbani explained.
Through his work on Al-Marri’s case however, Rabbani found himself in the lion’s den when he was detained upon arriving back in the U.K. He faced police interrogation and demands for his electronics and passwords. It demonstrates that while the War on Terror may formally be over, the security and surveillance apparatus it spawned is here to stay.