Entrapped? An Interview with  Razan Ghalayini

Among the films appearing in this year’s Sundance Festival—beginning today—is a short documentary. It may not garner the most headlines, but, then, it’s subject has been underreported, too.

Entrapped looks at the Fort Dix Five case, in which three brothers—Dritan Duka, Shain Duka, and Eljvir Duka—were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for plotting to attack Fort Dix military base despite allegations of entrapment.

Razan Ghalayini, a documentary filmmaker who currently works on the new late night show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and whose other work includes We Are The Giant, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, is both the director and producer of Entrapped. I spoke with Ghalayini to discuss her film, how terrorism cases are represented, and the impact on the individuals facing terrorism prosecutions and their families.

What is the Fort Dix case and what led you to make a documentary on it?

The Fort Dix Five case is the story of the Duka brothers in New Jersey and their two friends who were arrested on terrorism charges. Most of the evidence came through the lens of two informants the FBI hired to befriend the boys. The brothers were charged with conspiring to attack Fort Dix and they claim there was no plan to do that.

I came across the case because one of my great friends, Tarek Ismail, who was working at Human Rights Watch writing the Illusion of Justice report, was telling me about the Fort Dix Five case and how he visited the Duka brothers at the Supermax prison and they were unlike any other people he’d ever met. The story really stuck with me.

What leads you to view this as a case of entrapment?

I’m not a lawyer, so I can only give my opinion as a citizen and filmmaker. Having gone through hundreds of pages of transcripts, watched almost a hundred hours of surveillance footage, talked to the family, and even talked to the informant himself – we never found a single instance where the Dukas said they wanted to attack Fort Dix. Their friend, Mohamad Shnewer, does say that he wants to attack Fort Dix. He goes along with the informant's plan. I think he didn’t mean what he was saying but he wasn’t in our film so I didn’t really look into it much. The Dukas never agreed to the informants plan. I don’t think they even knew there was a plan to attack Fort Dix at all. The informant himself says the Dukas never knew anything about this. If the informant is saying that, shouldn’t we trust him?

Has there been much of a reception for the film?

Unfortunately, the mainstream news isn’t covering the case. Chris Christie is running for president and he did prosecute the case. It should be in the news more but it just doesn’t seem like a topic of interest—I think because people see the Dukas as terrorists and not as human beings. Hopefully, the film will help elevate their case as it plays at Sundance and wherever else it goes.

The film is narrated mostly by members of the Duka family, in particular Burim Duka, Eljvir, Dritan, and Shain’s younger brother. How did you decide to use that narrative frame?

Burim was a teenager when this was all happening. He was young at the time but he was there for most of the conversations, he knew the informants well, obviously he knew his brothers. He was there the night of the arrest, so he is a fairly reliable narrator in that sense.

We didn’t talk to anybody from the government for the film because the film is short and we wanted to place it in the Dukas’ world and show their humanity through the lens of their story. If we had made the film longer, we would have spent more time talking to folks from the government, and that would add a lot to the conversation in the long term. But what we set out to do was to tell their story and remind people that at the other end of all these cases is a family who is destroyed by these terrorism cases. It is a mother who loses her son, a brother who loses his older brother. By having Burim be the one who tells us that, you kind of remember that they are real people.

Family members and the people who are actually charged don’t often appear speaking for themselves.

Right, that’s because a lot of the defendants are in jail and we can’t get to them because they have SAMS [Special Administrative Measures] on them so it is hard to get to the defendant himself. If you’re the media and you want to have a camera, forget about it. As far as the family members, I don’t really know why they don’t want to talk. I think there is a healthy distrust of the media because of the way the media portrays their loved ones when they are being arrested. They’ve been through a traumatic event. You have to look at these events as a trauma on the family. Maybe they are still working through the trauma and trying to find how to communicate what happened to them. It’s a huge burden.

Was this reflected in your experience interviewing the Duka family?

The Dukas were very open. I came to them through Tarek who worked with them on the Illusion of Justice report, I was coming from the Intercept and working with Murtaza Hussain, and all of us come from Muslim families, so I don’t think we had the distrust that a lot of people have. And I worked on a film called We are the Giant about non-violent resistance through the lens of the Arab Spring. We came with a healthy résumé of not being xenophobic towards Islam, or maybe they just felt comfortable –you’d have to ask them. They were really kind and opened their home to us. It was a privilege to be able to share their story.

There seems to be a contrast in the film between the comments of the prosecution and media outlets emphasizing the role of Islam, religion, and foreign policy related to the Balkans, where the Dukas are from, and Burim’s comments which emphasize more universally American aspects of life – for example, gun culture. Did you draw that out purposefully? What’s the role of religion and ideology in this story?

That’s a tricky question. We definitely did put it there on purpose, the stark contrast between Chris Christie’s language and what you see. He’s saying we have these tapes and they show the Dukas training. Then you watch the tapes, which we have in their entirety, and they’re just these boys with their friends hanging out, shooting guns, talking about David Chappelle’s comedy, and they are also discussing religion.

In order to understand what they are saying about religion, it would take something a little longer than my film, but the Dukas grew up in Brooklyn, they ran a pizza shop, they had Brooklyn accents, they got into a lot of trouble when they were young, and there was a car accident that led them to rethink the way they were living their lives, and in order to change they embraced Islam the same way a born again Christian would: using it as a tool to restructure their lives. Islam was important to them, it was important to their parents, so they did talk about it more than we might be accustomed to but it was all innocent. Some of the interpretations I may disagree with personally, but they are entitled to have the interpretations that they want.

One powerful scene in your documentary shows the Dukas’ mother, Lata Duka, walking as the various reports and pundit commentary on the case play. How did you decide to film that scene?

I’m glad you like that scene. It’s a powerful one. We wanted a long scene of Lata taking her granddaughter to the bus showing everyday life, which is something all Americans can understand—taking your kid to the bus stop. When we were editing it, it just seemed like what the media was saying about this family was so far from what their daily life, and so we found that laying all these audio tracks underneath her walk juxtaposed reality with the inflated headlines the news pushes out all the time.

What do you see as the role of a documentary in a case like this?

I think that it sheds light to the humanity of the subjects. We read about people arrested on terrorism charges all the time and we never think about who these people are. The words the government uses are often very loaded and scary and people don’t want to engage with that. There’s always another side to things and it’s important to hear it.

Something I took away from the film is that I always thought of terrorism charges as something that happens to an individual but it actually happens to a whole family. Everyone who was involved is traumatized. It rocks their world in a way you can’t even begin to imagine. You’re talking about people who have a roofing company versus the entire United States government. It’s not an equal fight and it is a very big deal for these families.

Is there anything else people should know?

The Dukas just had what may be their final appeal. Their lawyers are submitting additional briefs on February 12th and then the judge will make a decision. They’ll either be let go and re-tried or remain in jail for life.