Zhubin Rahbar

As a Palo Alto native, Zhubin Rahbar had his sights on the Southland for as far as he could remember. He was involved at the Children's Theatre on Middlefield with Michael Liftin before writing and directing his own skits during his Junior High School years, winning a Best Drama Student award. After getting his Theatre Arts degree from UCSD, he moved to Los Angeles to begin his film career, studying rigorously under Robert Carnegie at Playhouse West in North Hollywood -incidentally the same theatre conservatory his old Palo Alto Junior High schoolmate James Franco studied at. Rahbar now has the opportunity to work with Academy Award Winning director Errol Morris ("Fog of War") on his New documentary "S.O.P. Standard Operating Procedure", scheduled for release April 25, 2008. The upcoming documentary, to be released by Sony Pictures classic, will examine the unintended consequences of the Iraqi war with a focus on events at Abu Ghraib prison, notorious for the shocking photos which began to appear in global media in 2004. It is the story of soldiers who believed they were defending democracy but found themselves plunged into an unimagined nightmare. Rahbar played the lead role of Iraqi prisoner Manadel al-Jamadi, who died after a fruitless half-hour interrogation, during which he was suspended from a barred window by his wrists, which were bound behind his back. The cause of his death was not generally known until February 17, 2005. News reports introduced the term "Palestinian hanging," a coinage attributed to the alleged frequent use of this technique by Israeli troops on Palestinian prisoners. Since at least the sixteenth century, this torture has been known as strappado.