Yesterday I became the first ever former Guantanamo prisoner to have stepped on North American soil as a free man.

Since my return from Guantanamo in 2005, I have travelled the world extensively and been welcomed by ordinary people as well as world leaders to talk about the effects of detention without trial and the uncontrolled abuse of power exercised during the US-led war on terror.

I’ve had meetings with some of the most powerful men in Europe, including Britain, and have delivered speeches in front of Presidents and Prime Ministers.

These countries include France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Slovakia, Poland, South Africa, Kenya, Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, UAE, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and Libya where I met with some of the country’s new leading figures who had themselves been victims of US and British instigated rendition. I’ve not been troubled entering any of these countries.

What I hadn’t done, however, is to take my message across the pond into the North America, where undoubtedly I believe it matters the most. Despite having had a book published there I’ve never been to America – although America has been to me. Notwithstanding numerous video-link lectures I’ve given to American colleges and institutions I was not prepared to risk a visit to the US and I’m certain the feeling is mutual, at least on a governmental level. Canada on the other hand, so I’d thought, was a different matter.

Two days ago, I took an Air France flight from Paris to Montreal.

My plan had been to go there to meet with former rendition victims Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki – both of whom have been subjects of official inquiries of the Canadian government’s role of their rendition and torture in Syria.  Also, I had intended to meet with the family and legal teams of Omar Khadr, the only Canadian citizen in Guantanamo – who I first saw in US custody in Bagram as a 15-year old in 2002 when he was brought in suffering horrific wounds to his body and face and whose tortured testimony was used to falsely identify Arar as a member of Al-Qaeda.

Khadr is also the subject of award-winning film You Don’t Like the Truth made by Montreal filmmakers which I have been helping to promote and whose screening I was due to attend a couple of months ago in Canada in addition to attending a conference on, ironically, Islamaphobia. However, back then I was told by Air Canada staff that I could not board the London to Toronto flight because I was on a US no-fly list. I told them I was not going to the US, but the response I got was that in the unlikely event of the flight being re-routed into US territory or airspace they were not prepared to take the risk.

I had some inhibitions about attempting to return to Canada which I communicated to some friends over there but I couldn’t know what would happen until I tried. Thus, I rescheduled my trip with another carrier to arrive slightly further north of US territory and sure enough I was allowed to board unhindered all the way to Montreal. Clearly I wasn’t on a Canadian no-fly list.

Then, upon arrival in Montreal, just when I’d allowed myself to relax, an announcement was made for everyone to remain seated. Three uniformed police officers boarded the aircraft and headed straight for me.  At that point I knew, in some corners of the world I will always be the Guantanamo prisoner, the terrorism suspect, who is unwelcome no matter what he does.

I was taken off the aircraft in full view of all the passengers and escorted by these armed men to immigration in order to be told that I was being refused entry to Canada because I’m a terrorist.

The reasons stated were that based on ‘open source’ information that I ‘was detained by the United States from 2002 until 2005 in Guantanamo’ and, that I signed a confession during that time that I was  member of Al-Qaeda and Taliban, even if it had been under duress.

I argued that even the Canadian Government recognised officially that the US practiced torture and that the implications of this decision mean that Canada, a signatory of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is acting on information obtained by torture, abusive treatment and crucially, which is devoid of the rule of law. Whilst they recognised that I said the statement may have been given under duress and the fact that after being interrogated by the world’s leading law enforcement and intelligence agencies I have not only never been charged or tried for  any crime but have rather been the recipient of compensation from the British Government for what happened and praise from US Government officials for my work since my release, their decision had already been made.

I could either stay in detention centre and challenge the decision or return home. I opted for the latter as I’ve had my fair share of being detained without charge or trial.

During my short sojourn in Canada I was also visited by a member of the Canadian intelligence services, CSIS. I tried explaining to both him and the border police that denying me entry would look bad for Canada. In the great scheme of things I suppose it doesn’t matter too much. Omar Khadr is a Canadian national and he hasn’t even made it to the airport.

I intend taking this issue up through the legal process as that is where I believe this case has to be fought but I may have a battle on my hands.  Nelson Mandela, who was convicted for terrorism by the apartheid regime in South Africa, remained on the US no-fly list until 2008 and Maher Arar, who received compensation and official apology from his government for complicity in his torture, is still on the list. Abdullah Almalki was prevented from boarding an internal Canadian flight despite being a citizen.

Yes, I was the first former Guantanamo prisoner to step onto North American as a free man – free to remain in a detention centre or to go back to where I came from.

An edited version of this article was published on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website

by Alistair Nixon

In Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Henry Perowne speaks of September 11th 2001 as his eighteen year old son’s induction into international affairs; “his initiation, in front of the TV, before the dissolving towers was intense, but he adapted quickly.” It is a statement that is true certainly for me and also for many of our generation. But the September 11th attacks were only part of the induction.

A counterpoint to the images of the “dissolving towers”, were the equally resonant images of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, removed not just from international law, but also, by insulation, from the environment surrounding them – kneeling, bound, jump-suited blobs of orange, their eyes, nose, ears, hands and mouths rendered obsolete with masks, headphones and gloves. They were the dehumanised victims of a scared and vengeful giant, divested of their most basic human rights – unpeople, as author Mark Curtis put it recently.

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film, The Road to Guantanamo, forcefully asserts the Person within that sensory deprivation kit. It comes at a time when Guantanamo is no longer news. Tony Blair summed up its position well at a recent press conference, referring to it as an “anomaly”. The horrors of Guantanamo have become part of the fabric of every day life. Thankfully, this film puts it back on the agenda. The story is based upon the account of three British detainees at Guantanamo – the so-called Tipton Three, Ruhal Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul, and Iad Asif Iqbal. Travelling to Pakistan for a wedding, they enter in to Afghanistan at the same time American bombing commences. As bombing intensifies, they attempt to get back to Pakistan, but instead become wound up with Taliban fighters, before their arrest by Americans. The Tipton Three spent just over two years at Guantanamo Bay.

The film cuts between the dramatised escapades of the young, clean shaven youths laughing and joking at the quirky otherworldliness of Afghanistan – with occasional flash backs to happier times; flirting with girls at Pizza Hut, riding scooters around a Tipton park – and interviews with their current, thick bearded counterparts. When captured, Ahmed and Iqbal were both 22, Rasul was 24. (Of course, they were by no means the youngest detainees, America having admitted to only recently releasing a 13 and 15 year old.). While our induction to international affairs was watching the horror, theirs was living it. The location filming in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran adds a great deal of believability to the film, as does the mock-up of Guantanamo itself. But as noted earlier, this is not a documentary; it is the dramatised account of the protagonists’ time in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. This is, of course, a partisan account; but it is our best opportunity to hear from those who have been inside Guantanamo Bay. By denying access to Guantanamo to lawyers, aid workers and journalists, the Bush administration has done harm to any defence they may have. Commentators such as David Aaronovitch have noted factual inaccuracies during parts of the film, such as the claim that the teenagers entered Afghanistan before the American bombing started (when in fact it was after).

Beginning the film is a clip of George Bush proclaiming that inside Guantanamo are the ‘bad guys.’ The film maintains the Tipton Three were completely innocent; but if the Tipton Three were not hapless youths, who somehow strayed into Afghanistan, but had gone with the intent of aiding Bin Laden in an assault on the West, would their treatment at Guantanamo have been warranted? The film provides an indirect answer to this question. We are not just witness to the conditions inside the camp, but also the interrogations. They are farcical. So much time and energy is expelled in to dragging a confession from the detainees, that the entire point of the exercise – extracting information on Al Qaeda- is forgotten. At one point, Ahmed is shown a video of a Bin Laden rally in Afghanistan in the year two-thousand. “I see you on the tape,” the interrogator snarls. Ahmed argues it couldn’t have been him, “I was working at Curry’s all of 2000″; but still, the interrogator persists. “How could you have been, if I can see you on the tape?” With interrogators like these, who needs enemies? The scenes at Guantanamo are full of black comedy. They go to show that Guantanamo is indeed an ‘anomaly’. But it is not just a moral or legal anomaly; the practices within Guantanamo fly in the face of rational thought. Regardless, the anomaly that is Guantanamo Bay will blot the consciences of many subsequent generations free from the smoke and haze of the collapsed twin towers. The question, however, is who will feel the most shame? Those who believe Guantanamo is necessary for world security; or those of us whose protests against Guantanamo have amounted to nothing more than mere indignant huffing and puffing. There have been no major protests; Camp Delta has been allowed to slip off the radar. The Road to Guantanamo is of the utmost importance in reminding us what an abomination the prison is, and of the urgency required in doing something to help those who are still trapped within its walls.

Road to Guantanamo is available to buy on DVD, priced £15.99