AP
Yvonne Bradley
The seed of Madison native Chris James Thompson’s new documentary We Are Not Ghouls was planted 20 years ago, during his time at film school in Milwaukee. Thompson’s fellow film student and friend, a Jordanian named Abdel, failed to show up for class one day. The professor said Abdel was being detained by the Department of Homeland Security, and Thompson later found out the detention was part of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces investigation.
“I went to the facility he was being held at and met with him,” says Thompson. “His teeth were knocked out and his jaw was wired shut.” Abdel refused to talk with Thompson about the investigation, saying that everyone who became involved had their life ruined. Thompson still saw the dedicated and passionate student and friend he knew from his film program. He couldn’t help but wonder if Abdel would have been treated differently if he had been from Sweden or Norway rather than Jordan.
Years later, still seeking to understand more about the country’s reaction to the attacks of Sept. 11 and its conduct in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Thompson picked up a book called The Guantanamo Lawyers, a collection of personal narratives from lawyers who represented detainees in the military prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Yvonne Bradley was a JAG lawyer in the Air Force — she had the most gripping essay in the book,” says Thompson. He was particularly interested in the transformation Bradley underwent after her first meeting with a Guantanamo client, named Binyam Mohamed.
Mohamed had been taken by the CIA in Pakistan, flown to a prison in Morocco where he was tortured into a false confession, then held for years in Guantanamo Bay without charge before Bradley took his case. Her story of defending Mohamed became the subject of Thompson’s documentary.
We Are Not Ghouls explores Mohamed’s case and the broader conduct of the United States in the War on Terror, including such tactics as “extraordinary rendition,” which involved secretly flying suspects to a third country where torture could be carried out by non-Americans — but under U.S. supervision. Audio from Mohamed, and interviews with Darrel Vandeveld, one of several prosecutors who resigned from the Guantanamo military commission due to ethical concerns about the lack of due process, are powerful elements that flesh out Bradley’s story.
Bradley’s story is so powerful, says Thompson, because she was transformed once she got to know Mohamed. “She was filled with anger that what she had been told was not the truth,” says Thompson. “That seemed like the change that all Americans were going to have to make.”
While saving money to travel and conduct interviews for the film over years, Thompson owned and operated a post-production studio in Milwaukee called Good Credit Productions and worked on other films. Much of Thompson’s previous work is based in Wisconsin, including The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, and MECCA: The Floor That Made Milwaukee Famous, part of ESPN’s 30-for-30 series, about a fan who finds the old floor of the Milwaukee Bucks’ MECCA Arena being sold for scrap, buys it and reconstructs it.
We Are Not Ghouls premiered last year at the SXSW Film Festival, where it took home the Audience Award. It wraps up its festival run at the Wisconsin and Milwaukee film festivals this spring. The film shows April 15 at Shannon Hall.
See our other 2023 Wisconsin Film Fest coverage here.
[Editor's note: The headline for this article was corrected to identify Yvonne Bradley as an Air Force lawyer, not a Navy lawyer.]
