The current presidential administration inverts longstanding U.S. policy by taking an aggressive posture toward nations suspected of harboring terrorists. George W. Bush's staff excuses the stance in part by insisting that citizens of those nations are better served by a U.S.-backed government than a quasi-totalitarian state. But Alison Maclean and Tobias Perse's documentary Persons Of Interest stoically questions America's moral standing, given the actions of the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Persons Of Interest presents the stark testimony of 12 people who were detained or had family members detained by authorities for weeks and months, often without the benefit of an attorney or outside contact, so that they could be questioned about suspected terrorist activity. All 12 are of Arab descent (or at least have Arab names), and none had been in trouble with the law before.
Persons Of Interest follows a bare-bones format: The interviewees stand in an empty room and describe what happened, from the moment of arrest to the moment they first stared into Maclean and Perse's camera. The absence of style can be numbing, but it serves a purpose, positioning the documentary as a public record, not a work of art. As such, the film is eye-opening. It records the frustrations of people who have been fighting for years to maintain religious and cultural roots while enjoying the freedoms of the U.S., but who suddenly find themselves under suspicion for owning a Koran or sending money to family in the Middle East. The interviewees recount the questions they were asked: about their feelings toward Israel, their mosque attendance, why they own a flight-simulator computer game, and so on. Their treatment sounds sickeningly familiar—like stories about the Taliban, or the secret police behind the Iron Curtain.
Periodically, Maclean and Perse cut in footage of Attorney General John Ashcroft explaining his tactics, comparing aggressive detention to Robert Kennedy's hassling of mobsters. The difference, as the movie's interviewees make clear, is that the overwhelming majority of the Muslim and "plausibly Muslim" people that the Justice Department has detained aren't criminals. Persons Of Interest serves a purpose just by letting its subjects vent, so that they know some of their neighbors still find this situation outrageous.