- published: 21 Sep 2007
- views: 226309
Rendition is a 2007 drama film directed by Gavin Hood and starring Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Jake Gyllenhaal and Omar Metwally. It centers on the controversial CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, and is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri. The movie also has similarities to the case of Maher Arar.
CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is briefing a newly arrived CIA agent in a square in an unnamed country in North Africa (filmed in Marrakech) when a suicide attack kills the latter and eighteen other people. The target was a high-ranking police official, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), who is in liaison with the United States and whose tasks include conducting interrogations, and even overseeing the application of techniques amounting to torture. Fawal escapes unscathed.
Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), their young son and his mother, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating that known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the United States from a conference in South Africa, he is detained by American officials and sent to a secret detention facility near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier, where he is interrogated and tortured. Isabella is not informed and all records of him being on the flight from South Africa are erased, although records remain of him boarding the plane at Cape Town International Airport and making a purchase en route.