February 26, 2008	Tuesday	Safar 18, 1429

AN Afghan taxi driver who died after brutal interrogation by the US military received a solemn tribute at the Oscars as a hard-hitting film about his death took the best documentary award.

Alex Gibney’s acclaimed “Taxi to the Dark Side” probed the death in custody of 22-year-old Dilawar at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2002.

An investigation into the death later found Dilawar had been repeatedly kicked and punched and was chained to the ceiling of his cell for days.

Leaked internal military reports said the young Afghan was mistreated even after his interrogators reached the conclusion he was innocent.

Gibney, who also produced hit documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, said his film had been dedicated to Dilawar and his father, a former US Navy interrogator of Japanese prisoners during World War II.

Gibney said his wife had wanted him to make a romantic comedy.

“But honestly after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition that simply wasn’t possible,” the film-maker said before dedicating the film to Dilawar, and his own father.

“This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver and my father a Navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury at what was being done to the rule of law.

“Let’s hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and go back to the light.”Gibney’s film amounts to a withering critique of US treatment of prisoners in its “war on terror”, concluding that interrogation tactics employed have been self-defeating.

“If you study Osama bin Laden’s words, if you study other terrorist groups throughout history, the goal is to get liberal democratic societies to publicly undermine their own principles,” Gibney said in an interview.

The director’s father had urged his son to make “Taxi to the Dark Side”after reports of mistreatment of prisoners by US forces first began to emerge.

“He was the one who told me -- not too long before he died -- ‘Go get your camera; I want to talk to you about this.’—AFP