Gitmo Coming to Xbox 360…

This is bizarre on so many different levels:

Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, was captured by the CIA and thrown in jail at Guantanamo Bay in 2003.

The 41-year-old, who was released in 2005, will now feature as himself in the game for Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

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.

Moazzam, who has a financial stake in the game, said he has not yet received any money from the producers.

He said: “The software firm approached me with this idea about making a game based on my experience in Guantanamo.

“My first response was hesitation – I was worried that it might trivialise my experience.

“I’m involved to make sure it is as true to life as possible.

[snip]

The Glasgow firm T-Enterprise is making the game called Rendition: Guantanamo.

Zarrar Chishti, the firm’s director, said: “We approached Moazzam because it’s very hard for us to know how to design the layout of the prison and he helped.

“It’s been in production for a year and two months. You start the game with the orange boiler suit, cuffs and earmuffs.

“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.”

I would never begrudge a detainee for making money from his experiences in Gitmo.  But I think it’s unlikely that the game will be “true to life,” given that it will involve mercenaries instead of soldiers and detainees with guns instead of feeding tubes.  That’s a shame, because a number of war-oriented video games, particularly WW II games such as the CALL OF DUTY and BROTHERS IN ARMS series, are extremely historically accurate and quite educational.

Oh, well.  At least the game doesn’t allow you to play a torturer who needs to extract information from a dangerous detainee before the “ticking time-bomb” scenario comes true…