For those of us who have long witnessed the story of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, the idea of making a film whose message sparks feelings of humanity and hope may seem like an impossible feat. Yet the new short documentary, Leaving Hotel California, directed by Dutch filmmakers Aybuke Demirel and Chimène de Jonge, does just that. Rather than a story laden solely with sadness and indignation, we have a compelling vignette whose lasting lesson is that even when the past is strewn with cruelty and injustice, the human spirit can overcome the searing scars of the past.
The film, only 24-minutes long, brings us the stories of two men whose lives converged at Guantánamo Bay, Mark Fallon and Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Fallon, deputy director of the post-9/11 Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) there in 2002, was tasked with investigating al Qaeda suspects and bringing them to trial via military commissions. A veteran NCIS special agent, Fallon etched his place in history by calling out and attempting to thwart the use of torture against the detainees. Within months his task force was sidelined, and in 2008, after repeatedly trying to replace the brutal interrogation policies with tried and true, lawful interrogation techniques, he retired.
Slahi was a Mauritanian prisoner held at Guantánamo for 14 years, during which he was tortured, never charged with a crime, and unjustly detained, including for seven of those years after a federal judge ordered his release citing a lack of evidence against him.
Neither Slahi nor Fallon are new figures in the story of Guantánamo (which, I should note, remains open to this day with15 prisoners, three of whom have been cleared for release but remain in captivity nonetheless). Both men have been featured in books and films documenting U.S. policies of detention and torture. And both have told their stories in their own books.
In 2015 Slahi published his acclaimed Guantánamo Diary, an emotional deep dive into the experience of cruelty and injustice of his time at Guantánamo, which he had started writing in his cell in 2005. Heavily redacted by intelligence officials, the pages groan with the emotional toll he suffered during his brutal interrogations, which included beatings, sleep deprivation, isolation, freezing temperatures and cold-water dousing, not to mention the psychological hardship of not knowing whether release from the prison’s “indefinite detention” regime would ever occur.
Nearly three years after Slahi’s memoir appeared, Fallon published Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture, His book, held up for 233 days and heavily redacted by government censors, chronicled the dark side of America’s war on terror, particularly the willful violations of law, due process, and professionalism. He elaborated on the wrongful use of torture to elicit information and railed against the abandonment of time-tested, peaceful practices designed to create empathy and elicit true statements from those under interrogation. Beyond his own exposé, numerous war on terror documentaries, such as Netflix’s Turning Point: 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, have focused in on Fallon’s embattled attempts to stand up to the policy makers and perpetrators of the torture policy.
Real to Reel
Leaving California adds a new—and believe it or not, uplifting—chapter to the tales of Slahi and Fallon. The camera zeros in on an airport arrival gate in Amsterdam. There, the Mauitanian, now a Dutch citizen, waits, his face shadowed by a hat in the color of the iconic orange of the jumpsuits worn by Guantánamo detainees. He’s leaning against a railing, over which he’s draped a cloth banner of sorts with a hand-written message, “Honor bound to remain human! Welcome my friend!”
Anticipation builds as the camera films Fallon preparing to deplane. While they have known each other for years, this will be the first time they will “touch flesh,” as Fallon puts it. He emerges from the gate with a soft laughter of appreciation for the seemingly unbelievable moment, and he is soon wiping away a tear. The two men embrace one another, fully cognizant of the unlikelihood of this moment. It’s “so surreal,” Slahi notes. “Pinch me, pinch me, so I believe this is for real.” As they make their way through the terminal together, Fallon is wearing an orange-colored scarf that Slahi gifted him upon his arrival.
Minutes later, the camera follows the pair as they amble through Amsterdam neighborhoods and come to Slahi’s home, where he initiates a Mauritanian tea ceremony, artfully preparing the drink. Sipping their cups, they reflect on the past that has bound their lives together.
Fallon recalls for Slahi the evolution of the CIA’s interrogation policies, noting that the use of torture wasn’t just immoral and illegal, it was destined to fail in its facts-gathering mission, as its subjects would say anything to stop the pain, no matter the facts. Fallon recounts for Slahi the ways in which the U.S. relied upon SERE, the acronym for a military training program designed to prepare high risk personnel to survive, evade, resist exploitation, and escape capture.
Reverse-engineered by Guantánamo interrogators, the techniques formed the basis of the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” as the CIA euphemistically called them, used to elicit information from detainees. On camera, Slahi compares SERE training, which is “voluntary” and which “you know is gonna end and there is nothing expected from you,” and real-life interrogations at Guantánamo, where you’re not a volunteer and the torture will continue “until you confess to something you didn’t do.”
“It’s like love versus rape,” he says, with “dire consequences for your life.”
The Dark Side
Making a briefappearance in the film is former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who in 2007 exposed the use of torture by the agency. Four years later, he was criminally charged under the Espionage Act in connection with another matter, leaking classified information, specifically the names of covert agents, to journalists. He eventually pleaded to the lesser charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, thus becoming the first CIA officer convicted of disclosing classified information to the press. Sentenced to 30 months in 2013, he was released in February 2015 after serving two years, then confined to house arrest for another three months. In the film, Kiriakou explains how the CIA interpreted the resistance of a detainees who failed to provide the information they were after: They were “highly trained in [their] ability to withstand torture” and lying. But a prisoner not confessing to terrorist associations or activities under torture might well have nothing to say, Kiriakou says, “because he hadn’t done anything.”
“Pinch me, pinch me, so I believe this is for real” Slahi says as Fallon arrives at the Amsterdam airport.
But the film’s takeaway is as much about resilience of the human spirit as is it about the brutal and lasting effects of torture. In the reunion of Fallon and Slahi, we see a bond based on the shared recognition that individuals can rise above the most dire circumstances and embrace their time on Earth in the service of trust, an allegiance to the higher values of human rights and lawful behavior, and the path to a soulful connection even in the wreckage of tremendous wrongs and cruelty.
Throughout, Slahi and Fallon are smiling, taking selfies, and acknowledging their shared affection for one another. Together, they remember, laugh, and even joke, defying any and all expectations of relations between a former Guantánamo official and a longtime detainee there. They are, as former U.S. and enemy combatants in Vietnam have put it during postwar visits, “brothers in arms.”
Fallon chuckles as he notes that the number on Slahi’s Dutch ID can now replace the one by which he was known at Gitmo: Prisoner 760. Much of their humor is based on their shared experience. As Slahi elaborately prepares tea, he jokes that “tea bags are a crime against tea-making and every tea-bag maker should be sent to Guantánamo Bay—without due process. So the only time I approve something be sent to Guantánamo Bay…..is if you drink tea over a teabag.”
The scars of the past, the film tells us, cannot be erased or forgotten, but they can be healed. Slahi and Fallon can never forget what has come before, of the wrongs that brought them together. But they are determined to enjoy the present, and one another. And to prove that resilience and forgiveness are pathways to a future where there is warmth and peace of mind.
The film’s title is borrowed from the Eagles’ 1977 hit, Hotel California. Its famous lyrics tell us, “You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave.” In fact, of course, Slahi did leave Guantánamo—albeit way too many years after he was swept up in the George W. Bush administration’s post-9/11 panic. And not only did he leave, but he found a way to transcend its harms, embracing a future where laughter and tea, camaraderie and connection are front and center. ###
Leaving Hotel California debuted at the Campus Doc Film Festival in the Netherlands in June and the filmmakers are currently exploring booking opportunities in the U.S. and Europe.
What it did to them. What it did to us.