Get Ready For Gitmo: The Video Game

Former Detainee Is Consultant On Game Where Players Try To Escape Mercenaries At Guantanamo

(CBS)  A British Muslim who was detained at the American military base at Guantanamo Bay for three years before being released has been enlisted by a Scottish video game maker to help make its upcoming computer simulation of Gitmo "more realistic."

"Rendition: Guantanamo" is being developed by the Glasgow-based T-Enterprise for the Xbox 360 and PC platforms.

As revealed in a trailer video, the game depicts the prison in the near future - after its anticipated closing by the U.S. government - as a camp run by mercenaries who detain innocents sold off to their captors to serve as "lab rats" in scientific experiments.

Moazzam Begg, who claims to have been tortured during his near-three-year detention, has been brought on as a consultant to the project, reports the Web site Deadline Scotland.

A Birmingham native who ran an Islamic bookstore, Begg was detained in Pakistan by coalition forces in 2002 and held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and, later, Guantanamo. He was released almost three years later without charge.

Begg wrote about his experience in the book "Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram and Kandahar" (New Press). He has also been interviewed for television and documentaries, including the Academy Award-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side."

In April 2008 Begg was one of eight former Guantanamo detainees who sued the British government, claiming U.K. authorities were complicit in their abductions, detention and interrogations.

T-Enterprise director Zarrar Chishti told Deadline Scotland's Cara Sulieman that Begg helped them with the design of the virtual prison's layout, and that artists created a 3-D rendering of him to appear in the game.

Begg (pictured, left, in 2006) told the UK's Sun newspaper that his involvement is to make sure the game is as "true to life" as possible, although in the game characters have the chance to escape, shooting their way to freedom.

Chishti said the firm has already gotten hate mail from the U.S. demanding that the game not depict the killing of American troops.

"But no U.S. or British soldiers get killed in it; the only ones being killed are mercenaries," he assured Deadline Scotland.

He anticipates strong sales in the Middle East.

Begg said any earnings he gets from the game will be donated to a charity fighting for the rights of detainees.

[barbaram99]

I won't buy the nor play it. That is my choice. Yet others will.

[cbarnes07]

I think people just need to relax, it's just a video game.

[rational_1]

I wonder if Harold and Kumar will make a "special guest appearance" in this video game. After all, they were the first to escape Gitmo.

[inventagod]

What's next? 'DlCK CHENEY and the NeoCons of Doom, 9/11 edition'???

[pubsnomore]

"As revealed in a trailer video, the game depicts the prison in the near future - after its anticipated closing by the U.S. government - as a camp run by mercenaries who detain innocents sold off to their captors to serve as "lab rats" in scientific experiments."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why would they need input from someone to make this more realistic? It's like when in the opening credits of a movie, they say based on a true story. LOL!