Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries

Lie Lab: Tourist or Terrorist (2007x36)

Air date: Jun 02, 2007

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul became known as the Tipton Taliban after they were picked up by US forces in Afghanistan and spent two years in Guantanamo Bay. They were accused, along with a friend, of having had weapons training with the Taliban, meeting senior Al-Qaeda figures and taking part in the Islamist terror war against the United States. They protested their innocence and, after they were released without charge in 2004, claimed that they had been tortured during their incarceration. But the pair are plagued by suspicious looks and whisperings of 'no smoke without fire'. They have volunteered to have Professor Sean Spence test them to prove their innocence. What were they doing in Afghanistan? Why did they visit a Taliban stronghold? And why were they with Taliban fighters when they were captured? When they answer these questions in the scanner, the technology doesn't quite give them the response they had hoped for. The Tipton Taliban were the subject of 'The Road to Guantanamo'; a Michael Winterbottom docudrama which was broadcast by Channel 4 in 2006.