The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

The true meaning of liberation.

One night in September 2003, the capture of journalist Yunis Khatayer Abbas by the United States military is caught on camera by filmmaker Michael Tucker (Gunner Palace) as he joined a “hit” on a Baghdad home. In front of our eyes Yunis is pulled out of his house in his pajamas as soldiers raid his home, interrogate his parents, and arrest him and his three brothers. The stated reason for capture: “planning the assassination of Tony Blair”.

Yunis is held captive in two prisons, including Abu Ghraib, for almost 9 months before being released with one word: “sorry”. With the aid of illustrator Petra Epperlein, Yunis’s home movies, and declassified documents, we learn exactly what happened to Yunis after his arrest, in his own words.

The end result is a humanizing portrait of an innocent man who could be any one of us—a brother, a husband and a neighbor—an ordinary man who learns the true definition of liberation while facing the mad accusations of an absurdist security apparatus seemingly torn from Camus or stolen from “Brazil”.