“Taxi to the Dark Side” was one of five films nominated in the documentary features category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A winner will be announced Feb. 24.
Director is filmmaker Alex Gibney, who is executive producer of the Iraq War documentary, “No End in Sight.” which recently won an award from the National Society of Film Critics.
“Taxi to the Dark Side” is the story of an Afghan Jitney taxi driver named Dilawar who was beaten to death in 2002 while in U.S. military custody at Bagram Air Base.
According to its reviews, the film goes to the heart of an examination of the abuses committed during the detainment and interrogation of political prisoners in the Middle East.
It scrutinizes America’s policy on torture and interrogation and time-honored ideals of democracy.
An Associated Press account from August 2005 said Brand, an Ohio reservist with the 337th Military Police Company, was accused of repeatedly beating two detainees while working as a guard at a detention center at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan in December 2002 and then lying about it. The detainees died later that month.
Galligan said that at Brand’s court martial at Fort Bliss he was originally charged with manslaughter, assault, maltreatment, false official swearing and maiming.
After an eight-day trial he was acquitted of manslaughter, Galligan said, but was found guilty of all the lesser offenses.
“He was not sentenced to serving time and he did not receive a bad conduct discharge or dishonorable discharge,” Galligan said.
Galligan said his acquittal infuriated some human rights groups and high level officials in the Afghan political infrastructure including President Hamid Karzai.
Galligan said Gibney’s documentary was professional and hard-hitting though it did not portray the military in a very good light.
But he said what happened at Bagram and later at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was not right.
“Among other things, these prisoners were kept in chains with their arms above their heads for long periods of time to induce sleep deprivation - then interrogated,” Galligan said.
And, he said the Army’s handling of the cases was wrong.
He said what is interesting is that all of this was known to senior commanders.
“This was not rogue soldiers acting on their own at night,” he said. “What is sad is that the Army went against very junior soldiers instead of the military commanders responsible and higher ranking officers.”
Galligan said the captain who commanded the military intelligence unit that interrogated Dilawar and others was transferred to Abu Ghraib shortly after the abuses were uncovered.
“She later got a letter of reprimand for ‘not taking proper steps,’ but neither she nor her commander faced charges,” he said. “Mind you, he (Brand) did something wrong, but the court martial was overkill - a show trial.”
The investigative CBS television show “60 Minutes” interviewed Galligan and Brand shortly after the trial, he said.
Galligan served 30 years as an Army lawyer and retired as a full colonel while the chief circuit judge at Fort Hood.
He said a part of his private practice has entailed representing defendants from the enlisted ranks.
Galligan said he attended the premiere for “Taxi” in April 2007 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, where it won the Best Documentary Feature Award.
Both of Gibney’s documentaries, “No End in Sight” and “Taxi to the Dark Side” have received Oscar nominations.
