Iranian TV movie takes on Guantanamo

Iran’s Al-Kawthar TV aired a TV drama earlier this month called Remember Your Dreams, or Guantanamo, which purports to show how photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo were made public by a fictional Gitmo detainee. The storyline, as best as I can understand it, goes a little something like this:

Innocent man is detained at Gitmo. Innocent man (a doctor with Doctors Without Borders, no less) is horrifically abused by maniacal U.S. Army major. Sample exchange:

Mustafa Nasser [in Arabic]: “I have the right to an attorney, or at least treat me according to the Geneva Convention.”

Major Rosenthal: “The Geneva Convention is implemented on prisoners of war, and not on dirty terrorists like yourself, who are responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers.”

Detainee is pitied by kindly U.S. female translator, but she cannot save him from the brutality of the major.

Doctor: [Standing over detainee] After going on his food strike, he became very weak, so he fell on the back of his head and broke his skull….What about we watch the baseball game tonight?”

Major Rosenthal: “Not on that TV set in your room.”

So far, lots of liberties taken, but they’re playing to their audience, right? Well, the action quickly goes from the realm of sadly possible to the realm of “what the..?”. The rest of the plot is a tad hard to follow from MEMRI’s translation of selected scenes, but it seems to go something like this: Kindly U.S. translator smuggles abuse photos out of Gitmo, Army major (who is apparently a corporate security kingpin of some kind whose online password is “satan”) engages in a shootout in Beirut with the detainee (who has since been released), there’s a random Lord of the Rings reference, and someone rapes an Islamic woman for no reason. Confused? Me, too. Have a look for yourself.