Citing the "Prevention of Terrorism" act, British Police have arrested and interrogated three of the stars of the award-winning film "The Road to Guantanamo" [scroll down for info on film], together with the three ex-Guantanomo detainees on whose story the film is based.

Acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom ("A Cock and Bull Story", "24 Hour Party People", "Welcome to Sarajevo") had been showing the film at the Berlin Film Festival, where it has won a number of top awards.

"The Road to Guantanamo" traces the true story of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, three Muslim friends from Birmingham who were picked up as aliens in Afghanistan by US forces and ended up in Guantanamo for three years, where they suffered brutal and humiliating treatment.

Extensive interrogation established that they had no connection with al-Qaida, and despite their plight being ignored by British authorities, eventually they were returned home.

The UK media covered live the return of these "Suspected terrorists" and the massive police convoy that brought them in to Ventral London for questioning. Their release after the UK police also found they had no connection with terrorism was, naturally, hardly mentioned.

Last week the three ex-detainees travelled to the Berlin Festival with the Winterbottom party, and were arrested yesterday under the Prevention of Terrorism Act as they returned with the Winterbottom Party.

They were held by Special Branch and questioned for several hours about where they had been and who they had met. They were also questioned on Michael Winterbottom's politics.

Even more worrying, the three actors who portrayed them in the film were also arrested and questioned.

The actors have no particular political or religious affiliation and were also arrested apparently purely on the basis that they were Asian. None of the white members of the group were arrested.

Following legal intervention by Gareth Peirce, the group were eventually released. Special Branch claimed they had not been arrested, merely detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

On Saturday the party returned to Berlin again to accept the film's awards. We wait to see what will happen when they come home this time.

UPDATE - Craig Murray says:

"On both www.craigmurray.co.uk and Blairwatch people have been questioning my source for this, and particularly querying why it is not in the mainstream media if it is true.

Well, I was in Winterbottom’s office yesterday, and heard it first hand, from people who were there when it happened. Nowadays the real news isn’t in the mainstream media, I am afraid. Leave them to their celebrity stories, and if you want to know what’s important, come to the web." [Craig Murray]


"THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO"

Four mates from the British Midlands embark on a wedding trip and side adventure in late September 2001 only to find themselves on "The Road to Guantanamo."

This remarkable film by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross tracks the true story of these British citizens of Pakistani descent, using hundreds of hours of interviews so the story can come out, literally, in their own words.

The early sections are reminiscent of Winterbottom's astonishing "In This World" (2003), but the road picture soon turns into a war picture and then a prison picture as the men are incarcerated by U.S. forces convinced they are Taliban.

A tough, compelling, must-see movie, "The Road to Guantanamo" is headed for a Channel 4 airing in the U.K.

As a consequence of that exposure along with its Berlin Festival competition screening and any possible honors, the film should get wider international distribution than "In This World" received.

The film certainly exposes the Bush Administration's repeated assertions of their humane treatment of Islamic prisoners at extra-legal detention centers as a lie.

The film mixes staged and archival footage with recreations of the interviews with the three surviving men. Annoyingly, film does come without a writing credit, presumably because interviews supplied the stories, but clearly someone structured the events.

Just after 9/11, Asif Iqbal (Arfan Usman) sets out for Pakistan to meet the bride his mother found for him.

When his best man calls to say he can't make the wedding, Asif calls another friend in England. Ruhel (Farhad Harun) agrees to be best man and he flies out with two other friends, Shafiq Rasul (Rizwan Ahmed) and Monir Ali (Waqar Siddiqui).

With some time on their hands, the four men visit a mosque and hear an Iman's call for men to travel to Afghanistan to give aid to the people.

Foolishly, they jump on a bus headed for the border. They arrive in Afghanistan just in time to see the first American bombs hit. At one point during the chaos, they get separated from Monir, who is never heard from again.

The others are captured by Northern Alliance troops and shipped in containers where many die, before being turned over to U.S. forces December 28. They are beaten and tortured by American soldiers when they insist they are not terrorists or fighters.

When one interrogator asks in all seriousness for the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, this provokes laughter in the theater that makes you want to weep: Is this what has become of U.S. intelligence?

The three Britons are eventually flown to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where they are held in detention for over two years, systematically tortured and accused of all sort of crimes.

A female interrogator shows them bad video footage of an old rally attended by Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta and insists she can see all three sitting in the crowd. This is another of those laugh/cry moments.

Ironically, a police record back in England clears them. Two of the youths were on parole for minor offenses while Shafiq was working at an electrical superstore at the time they supposedly were in Pakistan cheering Bin Laden. The men were freed in England in March 2004.

Working on a budget a little over $2 million, Winterbottom and Whitecross superbly recreate these experiences in locations in Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

There is little time for character or relationship development as events hit these young men fast. Similarly, the bullying American and British interrogators are all interchangeable.

The film doesn't really plead a political cause or moral crusade as show in persuasive dramatic terms what happened to these lads.

It makes no attempt to enlarge the story beyond these men or to verify any of their claims. Continually, President Bush refers detainees at Guantanamo as "bad people." Clearly, these three were not.

Kirk Honeycutt @ Hollywood Reporter