Q&A with Andy Worthington After Screening of “Doctors of the Dark Side” in Balham, October 26, 2014

Q&A with Andy Worthington After Screening of “Doctors of the Dark Side” in Balham, October 26, 2014

Andy Worthington

uruknet.info

October 21, 2014

If you’re in London on Sunday afternoon, and want to attend a free screening of the documentary film "Doctors of the Dark Side" followed by a Q&A session in which I’m speaking, then please come along to a screening put on by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (the campaign to free Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner in Guantلnamo) in Balham, in south London — and RSVP (all details below). You can also click on the image of the poster on the left to see a larger version of it.
"Doctors of the Dark Side," directed by Martha Davis, a clinical psychologist, and narrated by the actress Mercedes Ruehl, explores the role of physicians and psychologists in the torture of prisoners in the "war on terror" — not just the ordinary personnel who served as the foot soldiers of torture, and who continue to do so in their role force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantلnamo, but also the more senior individuals who recommended the torture program that was subsequently approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration — men like James Mitchelland Bruce Jessen, psychologists who worked on military programs to teach US personnel to resist torture if captured by a hostile enemy, and who reverse-engineered the techniques they taught for the torture of prisoners in the "war on terror."
I saw the film almost a year ago, at UCL in London, where I was privileged to meet Martha Davis, and I also attended a couple of screenings in the US in January, during my annual visit to campaign for the closure of Guantلnamo on the anniversary of its opening, where I also met Martha again — and I can wholeheartedly recommend the film to anyone who wants to thoroughly comprehend the role of psychologists and physicians in the Bush administration’s "war on terror" torture program, and to understand how significant and depressing it is that no one has been held accountable for the torture program — with the exception of the "few bad apples" held responsible for abuse in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Bagram in Afghanistan, who, of course, were not working unsupervised, and were part of a chain of command that went right to the very top of the Bush administration.
Shockingly, as this film is shown, which was released five years ago, and yet is still as relevant as ever, we still await transparency, let alone accountability for those who ordered, justified and implemented the "war on terror" torture program — awaiting the public release of a major report on the torture program, undertaken by the Senate Committee on Intelligence — or rather, that 6,300-page report’s executive summary, which is being held up because of obstruction by the CIA.
Here are the details of the screening. I hope to see some of you there.
Sunday 26 October, 1pm: Film Screening – Doctors of the Darkside. Followed by Q&A with Andy Worthington.
Exhibit Cinema, 12 Balham Station Road, London SW12 9SG.
Please note that seating is limited to 28 people, so booking is on a first come first served basis. Please book by ringing or texting 07756 493877, stating the number of seats required, and leave your contact details. The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign will then get back to you.
Please also see the trailer for the film below:

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the "Close Guantلnamo" campaign, and the author of The Guantلnamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for theUS and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversionand The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantلnamo" (available on DVD here — or here for the US).
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantلnamo prisoner list, and "The Complete Guantلnamo Files," an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantلnamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the "Close Guantلnamo" campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.