New York Movie Review

New York Movie Review

From October 2003 until May 2005, I was illegally detained by the U.S. government and held in CIA-run ''black sites'' with no contact with the outside world. On May 5, 2005, without explanation, my American captors removed me from my cell and cuffed, hooded, and bundled me onto a plane that delivered me to Sana'a, Yemen. I was transferred into the custody of my own government, which held me -- apparently at the behest of the United States -- until March 27, 2006, when I was finally released, never once having faced any terrorism-related charges. Since my release, the U.S. government has never explained why I was detained and has blocked all attempts to find out more about my detention. Mohamed Farag Bashmilah, Huffington Post. Posted February 20, 2009.

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# Here's a perfect illustration of the problem that was inherent in the Bush Administration's insistence on being able to hold terror suspects indefinitely: Benemar ''Ben'' Benatta is a Muslim man with a military background who was unfortunate enough to try and seek political asylum in Canada one week before the events of 9/11. On September 11 his five year ordeal began: About a week before, Canadian officials had stopped Benatta as he entered the country from Buffalo to seek political asylum. On that Sept. 11, he was quietly transferred to a U.S. immigration lockup where a day passed before sullen FBI agents told him what the rest of the world already knew: terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It slowly dawned on Benatta that his pedigree -- a Muslim man with a military background -- made him a target in the frenzied national dragnet that soon followed. The FBI didn't accuse him of being a terrorist, at least not outright. But agents kept asking if he could fly an airplane. He told them he couldn't. It made no difference. ''They gave me a feeling that I was Suspect No. 1,'' he said in a recent interview. The veiled accusations and vehement denials would continue for nearly five years -- despite official findings in 2001, that he had no terrorist links and in 2003 that authorities had violated his rights by colluding to keep him in custody.


# The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp is a detainment facility operated by Joint Task Force Guantanamo of the United States government since 2002 in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which is on the shore of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detainment areas consist of three camps in the base: Camp Delta (which includes Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray (which has been closed). The facility is often referred to as Guantanamo, or Gitmo. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order that stipulated that US military could indefinitely detain any non-citizen who he believed was involved in international terrorism.

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# After the Bush administration asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on June 29, 2006 that they were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

# On January 22, 2009 the White House announced that President Barack Obama had signed an order to suspend the proceedings of the Guantanamo military commission for 120 days and that the detention facility would be shut down within the year. (Source: Wikepedia)


New York for Oscars. Definitely. Take a bow Kabir Khan. Your work is excellent. Kabir, who says, he was in the US two days before 9/11 and saw first-hand the chaos that followed was stirred enough to work on this film. His second name is Khan! Immediately after the Twin Towers were targeted, the FBI picked up innocent civilians bearing Muslim names as suspects. What happened in captivity? Kabir tells a poignant tale.

New York is a tale of three friends Samir Sheikh (John Abraham), Omar Aijaz (Neil Nitin Mukesh) and Maya (Katrina Kaif). Kabir captures their blossoming friendship and establishes Omar's moving away from their life for seven years. Suddenly the FBI pushes him back into their living room. Framed for transporting illegal arms, Omar is tortured and