Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side

handcuffs

Another chance to hear Taxi to the Dark Side - a fascinating, moving and detailed look at American abuses of prisoners in the so called 'war on terror'.

It started as a documentary film and was co-funded by BBC Television as part of their 'Why Democracy?' season.

Directed by the acclaimed American documentary maker Alex Gibney, the film won an Oscar for best documentary 2008.

It is a chilling and compelling account of torture, abuse and murder, of an innocent taxi driver named Dilawar in the US prison at Bagram airbase, Afghanistan.

Such was the film's power and superb journalism that BBC World Service commissioned a half hour radio version of the two hour film.

On December 01 2002, Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver, took three passengers for a ride. He never returned home.

Travelling back from Khowst he was stopped by a group of Afghan militia men and arrested on suspicion of involvement in a rocket attack on camp Salerno, along with his passengers.

Dilawar was taken to Bagram prison, an old Soviet airbase used by US forces to collect and interrogate thousands of detainees from Afghanistan and Pakistan, on December 05 2002.

Five days later he was dead, brutally beaten by American troops during his interrogation.

Was his torture and abuse the work of a few rogue soldiers? Or, was it officially approved by the Pentagon?

Alex Gibney narrates this chilling report on the use of extreme violence on prisoners in Bagram and Abu Ghraib and asks what lessons have been learned about the use of torture by American troops?

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