Guantanamo Bay: The Video Game
A British software company is developing a video game in which the player is a terror detainee at Guantanamo Bay and has to escape and kill a bunch of "mercenaries." It's based in part on the experiences of an actual Gitmo prisoner, Moazzam Begg, who's a consultant to the game.
You can see the trailer at left. It's called "Rendition: Guantanamo." From the Telegraph:
In the game, players control a detainee at the camp, which has been sold by the US Government to a shadowy agency called Freedom Corp.
Before he is subjected to torture and scientific experiments, the character must shoot his way out of the detention camp to bring down his captors.
Zarrar Chishti, the director of T-Enterprises, which is developing the game, told the paper that it's really no big deal, because the game's players will only be shooting the "mercenaries" of Freedom Corp.:
"We have had a lot of hate mail about this, mainly from America, saying things like 'don't dare put out a game that shows them killing our soldiers.' But no US or British soldiers get killed in it. The only ones being killed are mercenaries."
Begg, a British citizen who moved to Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, will get a piece of the game's profits if there are any. He was captured by the CIA in Pakistan in 2002 and shipped to Gitmo. According to the Weekly Standard, Begg confessed to FBI interrogators that he "was armed and prepared to fight alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda against the US and others" and was among the Al-Quaida fighters who retreated to Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden. Begg says the confession was coerced under torture. He was released in January 2005 at the request of the British government.
The Telegraph says the game is being developed for the XBox360, which we find dubious. T-Enterprise claims to be a "team of expert computer designers and developers based in Glasgow [that] specialises in designing and building computer 3D console games for the Xbox 360," but the firm's web site features only flash and mobile phone games. And to judge by the "Rendition: Guantanamo" trailer, as well as this one for something called "Karma Combat," both of which look like they came from 1998, they're not very skilled at more sophisticated platforms.
And to get a sense of where T-Enterprise is coming from, some of their other games include "Bush's Billions," "Bye Dubya," and "Send a Ransom" (!). And here are pictures of co-founders "Sadia" and "Zarrar."
In a statement, Microsoft said: "We are unaware of this game and have not been contacted by this developer. As such, we don't have enough details about the game to even comment about it."