Taxi to the Dark Side

Synopsis: Using the torture and death in 2002 of an innocent Afghan taxi driver as the touchstone, this film examines changes after 9/11 in U.S. policy toward suspects in the war on terror. Soldiers, their attorneys, one released detainee, U.S. Attorney John Yoo, news footage and photos tell a story of abuse at Bagram Air Base, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay. From Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Gonzalez came unwritten orders to use any means necessary. The CIA and soldiers with little training used sleep deprivation, sexual assault, stress positions, waterboarding, dogs and other terror tactics to seek information from detainees. Many speakers lament the loss of American ideals in pursuit of security.
Director(s): Alex Gibney
Production: ThinkFilm
  Won 1 Oscar. Another 10 wins & 4 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.6
Metacritic:
82
Rotten Tomatoes:
100%
R
Year:
2007
106 min
Website
444 Views


The procedures adopted to try Hamdan also violate the Geneva Conventions. The D. C. Circuit dismissed Hamdans challenge in this regard on the grounds, inter alia, that the Conventions are not judicially enforceable and that, in any event, Hamdan is not entitled to their protections. Neither of these grounds is persuasive... Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, decided by the United States Supreme Court on June 29, 2006

On December first, 2002 ...

Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver, took three passengers for a ride.

He never returned home.

TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] When the sun started to go down, the sand started blowing.

It was like a big dust bowl. And I'm thinking,

"Boy, is it gonna be like this every night?"

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram] I remember walking in to there for the first time:

The smell...the smell is the first thing that hits you,

And being from D.C., if you've ever been to the National Zoo

When you walk into the elephant house there, that's the best way to describe it.

There were a few of us that lived in the prison, and I was one of them.

They built it up to be a big, scary place to the prisoners.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. Forces occupied Bagram,

An old Soviet airbase as a place to collect and interrogate thousands of detainees

captured throughout Afgan and Pakistan.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] These were suspected Taliban.

They were being caught by Special Forces throughout the countryside, brought to Bagram to be held,

interrogated, determined if they were a high-value prisoner.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] These were not nice people at all.

They were very evil people who, you know, definitely had violent intentions.

On December 5, 2002 ...

Dilawar, the taxi driver, was brought to Bagram.

He was designed a PUC: Person Under Control, No. 421.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] He was something to do with a trigger man for a rocket attack.

And that's about all I know.

Five days after his arrival, he was dead.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I would say this was around about 05:00 in the morning.

As I walked by Dilawar...I think that's his name, Dilawar

Walked by Dilawar's cell,

I noticed that he was just kind of hanging there with his head down.

But he was being too still to be, you know, just hanging there and sleep.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] SGT. Curtis opened up the door, and we went in.

He was unresponsive. And we started CPR.

[PFC. Willie Brand, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I was downstairs in general population.

Then I heard a call come in asking for Cammack to come upstairs.

He was a medic, and we carried him downstairs on a stretcher.

And the Cammack was still on top of him while we're carrying him down, still trying to get him back going,

all the way down the stairs. We got him through the front door and they kept working on him,

kept working on him until the doctor got there and pronounced him dead.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I don't know if it was an injury that was aggravated by something,

or whether he was just sick coming in.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] They are very frail people,

And I was surprised that it had taken that long for one of them to die in our custody.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] There was a definite sense of concern, because he was the second one.

Just a week before Dilawar's death, another detainee at Bagram had died.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] You know, you wonder: Is this something we did?

Or did somebody kill him or something? But I just didn't know.

According to the medical examiner, the first detainee to die, Habibullah,

had a preexisting pulmonary condition.

But it was the beatings he sustained at Bagram that led to the cause of his death:

A bloodclot that traveled to his lungs.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] When the second one died a week later,

That's when it was like, "Oh, crap! Something's going to happen now."

That's two prisoners dying within a week of each other. That's bad.

A preliminary investigation into Dilawar's death, revealed deep bruises all over his body.

But it did not conclude that his treatment at Bagram was to blame.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] The next day, they said, "Draw out how he was shackled up here."

And I made that crude drawing.

The ceiling of these isolation rooms was just a simple metal grate,

And it was thick enough you could put handcuffs, you know, through the wires of that ...

[Military Investigation Reenactment] And you just kind of chain them up like that, out to the sides, like this.

Forced standing for long periods had inflamed tissue damage from blows to Dilawar's legs.

But the initial Bagram press release failed to mention overhead shackling and beatings.

It declared that both detainees had died of natural causes.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] My opinion is that the military wanted to get this over,

and get this done quickly, before it really got noticed.

Soon after Dilawar's death, the officer in charge of interrogation at Bagram,

Captain Carolyn Wood, was awarded the bronze star for valor.

Following the Iraq invasion, Wood and her intelligence unit,

were given a new assignment:

Abu Ghraib.

A FEW BAD APPLES

[Eric Lahammer, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] The only thing I can really remember about Abu Ghraib was the heat.

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Alex Gibney

Philip Alexander "Alex" Gibney (born October 23, 1953) is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time".His works as director include Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (winner of three Emmys in 2015), We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (the winner of three primetime Emmy awards), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (nominated in 2005 for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature); Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (short-listed in 2011 for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature); Casino Jack and the United States of Money; and Taxi to the Dark Side (winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature), focusing on a taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed at Bagram Air Force Base in 2002. more…

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