Lawyer-Actor Writes Gitmo Script
An actor-turned-lawyer has written a 30-minute screenplay that imagines the deliberations of three military judges deciding whether to hold a Guantanamo detainee as an enemy combatant.
Sig Libowitz played a Jewish man with mob ties on The Sopranos and a public defender on Law & Order before he attended the University of Maryland Law School. He wrote the 30-minute screenplay, called “The Response,” and produced it with funding through the school’s Linking Law and the Arts series, the Associated Press reports.
The film will be offered to educational institutions ranging from high schools to law schools and will be offered for television distribution.
The movie was shot in three days in the law school’s mock courtroom, the story says. Libowitz played one of the judges, along with Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek: Voyager and Peter Riegert, who played a lawyer on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and a corrupt politician on The Sopranos.
The detainee is played by Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Libowitz based the screenplay on transcripts of the Guantanamo Bay tribunals. He said the movie weighs the need to protect the country against the rights of the detainees. “This is really something that takes a look at what’s going on there from a very fair-minded perspective,” he told AP.
