The footage is indeed remarkable. A group of former Guantánamo detainees, held captive by the US for 15 years or more, are undergoing what is described as a rehabilitation program for Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia. We watch as they learn about Freud in interpersonal skills training, draw their feelings in art therapy, swim laps in a state-of-the-art indoor pool. “Right now, you smell like sweat,” one instructor tells them in a lecture on how to find a wife. “How will she put up with you? Dress nicely for her.”
Such intimate access to men made largely invisible by America’s “war on terror” is a rare feat in journalism, especially in a secretive dictatorship like Saudi Arabia. So how did the documentary film-maker behind Jihad Rehab, since renamed The UnRedacted, manage it?
