The Adventures of Chester: Brits Create Guantanamo Reality Show

An Alert Reader notes that a story in The Guardian: C4 lines up Guantanamo-style torture show.

Channel 4 is to broadcast what it is styling a Guantánamo Bay-style reality show that will examine the effects of mild torture on seven male volunteers.

The Guantánamo Guidebook will recreate some of the practices used at the US naval base where hundreds of so-called "enemy combatants" have been held without trial or access to lawyers for nearly three years.

Using an east London warehouse and declassified internal documents obtained from US sources, programme-makers mocked up conditions as they are inside Guantánamo, before subjecting seven volunteers to some of the milder forms of torture alleged to have been used by US authorities.

The programme exposed the volunteers, three of whom are Muslim, to 48 hours of "torture lite" including sleep deprivation, the use of extreme temperatures and "mild" physical contact.

As at Guantánamo and more vividly in Abu Ghraib, the volunteers were also subject to periods of enforced nudity and religious and sexual humiliation.

The seven male volunteers, one of whom withdrew after just seven hours suffering from hypothermia, were recruited initially by adverts asking how "hard" they were.

After psychological testing there were then told what the programme was about and the list whittled down to seven. All were offered counselling after filming was finished.

The programme is part of a four-pronged investigation into the modern-day use of torture practices, in and outside the Cuban island base which Amnesty International has described as an "icon of lawlessness".

It is part of an upcoming season of films examining the use of torture in the "war against terror".

Posted by Chester on February 9, 2005 9:29 PM to The Adventures of Chester