"The Road to Guantanamo" is the story of four friends who set off from Tipton in the English Midlands in September 2001 for a wedding and a holiday. Two and a half years later three of them returned home. Their story is told through a mixture of interviews with the men, news archive and recreation of their ordeal. Their journey took them from Tipton, to Karachi, Kandahar, Kabul and Konduz, where they were captured by the Northern Alliance, imprisoned in Sheberghan, then flown by the Americans to Kandahar. From there they were taken to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where they were imprisoned in Camp X-Ray then Camp Delta for more than two years. The Americans accused them of being international terrorists and claimed they had footage of them with Osama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta. They were released when they proved that one of them had been working at Curry’s, an electrical superstore, at the time and the other two were on parole in Tipton. "The Road to Guantanamo" is an epic journey - telling the story of Ruhel (19 years old in Autumn 2001), Asif (19), Shafiq (23) and Monir (22) their misunderstandings, ignorance, confusions and friendships as step by step they go from the safety of their small-town teenage existence to the heart of the ‘war on terror’.

On September 10th 2001 Asif Iqbal’ s mother returned home from a visit to Pakistan. She had found a girl for Asif to marry. Nine days later Asif set off for the small village near Faisalabad in the Punjab where his bride to be lived. Whilst he was in the village his best man called to tell him that he couldn’t come out for the wedding. So Asif called another friend from Tipton - Ruhel Ahmed. Ruhel agreed to come out to be best man. A few days later he flew out with two other friends – Shafiq Rasul and Monir Ali. They all meet in Karachi. After a couple of days on the beach and in the arcades they visit a mosque with Shafiq’s Pakistani cousin Zahid. An Imam calls for men to travel to Afghanistan to give aid to the people. The cost of the journey to Kandahar is only £2.50. All five volunteer. The next day the bus sets off for Kandahar. After a night's travelling, the convoy arrives in Quetta, in north-west Pakistan, where their coach hits and kills a man, and their driver runs away. Another bus takes them to the border, and they cross into Afghanistan. A taxi takes them to Kandahar which they reach around midnight, just as the first US bombs begin to fall in the distance.

The next day, the convoy travels to the capital, Kabul. Asif becomes very ill, and visits a doctor. The five men spend their time wandering around the city. Communication is hard. Urdu is their third language and they can’t speak Pashtu or Dari at all. Bombing continues in the mountains around them. Anxious to return to Pakistan, they pay for a minibus to take them and a bunch of others towards the border. Instead they are taken north, through the mountains, until they reach Konduz. They are now trapped in one of the last remaining Taliban strongholds in the north, surrounded by Northern Alliance troops led by General Dostum. They are taken to a house in the hills outside the town where the water makes them all extremely ill. Nothing happens.

They are taken back into Konduz. The city is bombed daily by US planes, and the Taliban forces stream into town, but after two weeks a truce is negotiated through the UN. The Taliban agrees all the foreigners should leave the city first. Monir is not with the others when he is told to get on a truck out of town. He is never heard from again.

The four others are told that foreigners have been granted safe passage, so they board a truck headed for Kandahar in the night. The convoy of trucks is bombed by US fighter planes, killing or maiming most of the passengers. Zahid is on a truck that is hit. They find him soaked in blood but still alive.

The four are captured by Northern Alliance troops. Along with hundreds of other prisoners, they are tied up and herded into containers. Ruhel Shafiq and Zahid are lucky. Their container has canvas sides. Asif is not lucky. His container is metal and airtight, and the prisoners begin to suffocate. Asif loses consciousness. When he comes round there are bullet holes in the sides of the container. Many prisoners are dead – either from bullets or suffocation. Asif has a gunshot wound. He licks the condensation on the walls of the metal container – a mixture of blood and water – to survive. The four men are detained at Sheberghan prison for 10 days, and are visited by Red Cross officials, who notify the British embassy in Karachi. However, on 28 December, US forces policing the prison take the three Britons and fly them to a detention centre at Kandahar air base, where they are beaten and interrogated, by both US soldiers and the SAS. Zahid is left behind, and eventually imprisoned in Pakistan.

On 13 January 2002, Asif and Shafiq are taken to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where they become detainees in the open-air cages at Camp X-Ray. Ruhel joins them on 10 February. A few months later, they are moved to the newly built Camp Delta, a prison comprising metal containers. During their incarceration, all three are interrogated by the US and MI5 (UK security service). They are tortured hundreds of times, and accused of countless offences. In May 2003, a video is discovered of a rally attended by Osama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta - the leader of the September 11 hijackers - at which the FBI claim to have spotted all three. MI5 disprove this allegation as in reality Shafiq had been working at Curry’s, and Asif and Ruhel had been on parole back home in Tipton. Eventually, on 5 March 2004, after over two years at Guantánamo, Shafiq, Asif and Ruhel are taken back to England, and interrogated in London by the Anti-Terrorist squad at Paddington Green station. The next day they are released without charge.