Reeck, Marc Van den - short clip - PreparingForJanko
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Transcript
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| - | I had never met anybody who had been | 0:00 |
| for two years in a Taliban prison | 0:02 | |
| and then afterwords, for a number of years | 0:05 | |
| in Guantánamo. | 0:07 | |
| So I had no benchmark. | 0:08 | |
| It was very difficult | 0:11 | |
| for us to try to understand | 0:12 | |
| how a person | 0:17 | |
| how a person like that is, how he develops. | 0:19 | |
| We, we had no, | 0:22 | |
| we didn't expect anything actually, to be very honest. | 0:23 | |
| I mean, we were expecting to see a man who was | 0:26 | |
| obviously going to long for being freed, | 0:30 | |
| was obviously going to be a bit bitter | 0:33 | |
| and so on so forth on those things, | 0:36 | |
| who would obviously have had some mental scars | 0:38 | |
| from being locked up for a number of years | 0:43 | |
| like anybody else. | 0:46 | |
| And I think we've been working | 0:48 | |
| for the better part of two months | 0:49 | |
| to lay the ground for his coming across. | 0:55 | |
| On the American side, they were a bit pushy on that | 0:59 | |
| to let him come across. | 1:01 | |
| And we said, "We will let you know when we are ready. | 1:06 | |
| We have made a political commitment that we will take him. | 1:09 | |
| There is no reason to put that | 1:13 | |
| into doubt unless other factors come up | 1:14 | |
| but they probably won't. | 1:17 | |
| Let us take care of the the arrival process | 1:20 | |
| which has to be done extremely carefully. | 1:25 | |
| And let us also take care of once he's on our ground | 1:28 | |
| what we're going to do with him. | 1:33 | |
| Where are we going to bring him? | 1:33 | |
| How is he going to live? | 1:35 | |
| What are we going to surround them with? | 1:37 | |
| How are we going to take care that | 1:40 | |
| if he falls ill that someone takes care of him? | 1:43 | |
| Which roof is it going to have over his head? | 1:47 | |
| Who are the, | 1:50 | |
| who are the instances who are going to keep an eye | 1:51 | |
| a watchful eye on him? | 1:54 | |
| Who's going to know, how are we going to know where he goes | 1:59 | |
| and when he goes?" | 2:03 | |
| So we were, we, we really prepared it very, very properly. | 2:05 | |
| Believe me, very properly. | 2:09 | |
| Initially, | 2:10 | |
| the American Embassy came to us, | 2:14 | |
| came to me with with, with a screenplay, | 2:17 | |
| with a scenario. | 2:22 | |
| And I said, | 2:27 | |
| "You put your scenario site here as a scenario. | 2:29 | |
| The military airport in Brussels is | 2:34 | |
| on Belgium soil, we are going to tell what the scenario is | 2:37 | |
| because we are going to carry the consequences afterwards." | 2:40 | |
| Well, that took a little bit of difficulty | 2:44 | |
| but at that last end, this was accepted too. | 2:46 | |
| And it made a difference in the sense that for instance | 2:50 | |
| there were some symbolic elements in it | 2:55 | |
| of course, but there were also very practical elements. | 2:56 | |
| Symbolic element was for instance that | 2:59 | |
| we insisted that for instance | 3:02 | |
| he would be undone his handcuffs and so-on | 3:06 | |
| onboard the plane. | 3:11 | |
| We did not put them into handcuffs. | 3:13 | |
| We were not going to take his handcuffs away. | 3:16 | |
| It's not up to us to take the handcuffs away. | 3:19 | |
| We wanted him to foot, put his first toe | 3:23 | |
| on Belgium soil as a free man. | 3:26 |
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