It's not about his personality, McGentrix. It's to do with principles.
Thanks for your thoughtful contribution.
Principles, huh?
Quote:NOTES from a terrorist weapons training course were found in the Sydney home of Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib, who has also allegedly met Osama bin Laden. Mr Habib allegedly told a Sydney friend before his arrest that he was a big fan of bin Laden and wanted to live in one of the terrorist mastermind's training camps. Consequently, the father of four travelled overseas in March 2000, allegedly to train with Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LET, which has since been listed as a banned terrorist group in Australia.
"I met him (Mr Habib) in a cafe in Lakemba and he discussed with me that he had plans to go to Afghanistan to live an Islamic life in the bin Laden camp," friend and taxi driver Ibrahim Fraser has told the ABC's Four Corners. Mr Fraser said he thought Mr Habib had told him, after returning from Afghanistan, that he had met bin Laden there. Mr Fraser said Mr Habib revealed little else about his trip. Mr Habib is detained by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, along with fellow Australian terror suspect David Hicks.
Leaving Sydney for a second trip in July 2001, Mr Habib told friends and family he was going to search for a suitable religious school for his children in Pakistan. But the Australian Government says Mr Habib went to Afghanistan to train with al-Qaeda. In tonight's program, Four Corners says Mr Habib underwent an advanced training course there in surveillance and photographing facilities, the establishment and use of safehouses, covert travel and writing secret reports.
Mr Habib has been held without charge for almost three years in Cuba after being picked up near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border following the September 11 attacks. The US is investigating claims that Mr Habib was beaten and tortured after his transfer from Pakistan to Egypt and then to Cuba. ASIO, which had been interested in Mr Habib since the early 90s, subsequently raided his southwestern Sydney home. Four Corners says raids of the Habib residence uncovered LET notes on weapons courses. Life had become increasingly desperate for Mr Habib in Sydney before leaving. Depressed, he lost a contract for his cleaning business and had fallen out with a fundamentalist Islamic group in Lakemba.
The group's spiritual leader based in Melbourne has told The Australian that Mr Habib tried to recruit people in Sydney for jihad overseas. Sheikh Mohommad Omran also said fallout occurred after Mr Habib used the group's name to help solicit a $12,000 war chest for Muslim rebels in Chechnya. Sheikh Omran said Mr Habib had tried to recruit people to jihad by writing their names on volunteer lists without their knowledge.
source
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How Habib became one of 'the worst of the worst' You should read this whole link.
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Quote:AUSTRALIAN terrorist suspect Mamdouh Habib wore an Osama bin Laden T-shirt and tried to sign up Sydney Muslims for jihad, according to former spiritual colleagues. But he never posed a serious threat to the community despite his "big mouth", said members of a western Sydney mosque, who fell out with the Guantanamo Bay detainee over his increasingly erratic behaviour.
In a report to be aired on ABC television's Four Corners program, the spiritual leader of the mosque said Mr Habib was a disturbed man who regularly argued angrily about religion. "He used to wear the photo of Osama bin Laden (on) his T-shirt," Sheikh Abu Ayman told the program, describing it as a "childish thing".
Mr Habib also appeared at the mosque, which was near the Lakemba mosque, dressed in a "ninja hat or something like that and white suit and black belt", he said. "I could say he's a disturbed man. If you don't agree with him he will accuse you of every name under the sun and again this is not a normal thing from a normal person to do."
Sheik Abu said people would give their names to Mr Habib and "find out that he's collecting these names for so-called jihad or something like that". He did not know where Mr Habib wanted people to fight, but believed it was overseas, probably in Chechnya. "Chechnya was the main area, the hot area in that time," he said.
Australia's most senior Islamic cleric, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilaly, reportedly almost deported in the 1980s for radical religious views, described Mr Habib as "sharp and aggressive. He would get angry quickly and then calm down quickly."
A taxi driver who frequented Mr Habib's coffee shop was quoted as saying Mr Habib travelled to Afghanistan to "live with bin Laden" and to have his children learn Islam there. On returning, Mr Habib had not said what he had done, but said he had met bin Laden and found Afghanistan a "truly great place". But the taxi driver did not believe Mr Habib was a terrorist.
"People join the army but they don't all go to war," he said. The Four Cornersreport says Mr Habib met two Germans near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and the three then caught a bus headed for Karachi. Pakistani police stopped the bus and detained the Germans. Mr Habib was only arrested after protesting angrily about the treatment of his companions.
Sheikh Abu said he wasn't surprised Mr Habib was detained in Guantanamo Bay, "because a man with a big mouth like this, he will end up there. But the Government didn't do anything to let the American (Government) understand this is not the right man in your hand, he is not what he claims he is. He is a disturbed man (but) he doesn't deserve that punishment for his big mouth."
The Australian Government believes Mr Habib trained with Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaeda before he was arrested on October 5, 2001.
source
McGentrix
He was locked up & tortured for 3 years at Guantanamo Bay & there was no case found to prosecute.
No, he claims to have been tortured. He also claims to be innocent of all wrong doing.
Look, if 3 years of "questioning" at Guantanamo Bay can't establish a case against him, well .... ?
This is becoming ridiculous. The Prime Minister is continuing to take the maybe/maybe not approach in regard to Habib. Is the law to be altered so he can be charged? If the government believes it has grounds to charge him then it should go ahead & do it. It is almost as if the government is attempting to gag him. What will he say about his period of US detention & any lack of representation on the part of the Australian government during that time?. This game of maybe/maybe not being played by Howard via the media is starting to look increasingly like harrassment. And apart from that, how on earth was it possible for anyone to burgle Habib's home if, as we've been told, ASIO & NSW police are closely monitoring his activities? This whole story is starting to look very messy & nasty indeed. The government should either put up or shut up.
Habib burgled as PM says he may yet be charged
By Brendan Nicholson
National Security Correspondent
February 8, 2005/the AGE
Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib may still face terrorism charges after Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said he could not rule out the chance he would be charged in the future.
The warning came after the Sydney house in which the Habib family were living was burgled on Saturday. The family were out at the time. Police are investigating.
For months, the Government has taken the position that if Mr Habib were returned to Australia, it had nothing to charge him with, because laws he might have broken did not exist when he was allegedly involved in activities now considered terrorism.
The Age has been told that while Mr Habib was clearly not involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001, as the US Government previously claimed, the Government has evidence that he did receive training in terrorism camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He was in Pakistan in the days before September 11, 2001, and allegedly phoned his wife Maha in Sydney to tell her that something big was going to happen in the US. Australian sources have said it was widely known in the al-Qaeda camps that something big was being planned.
A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Mr Habib could not be charged on the evidence available at present, but if any further evidence became available, that would be reviewed.
Mr Howard said there were reasons why Mr Habib's passport had been cancelled. "You will understand for good reason the continued reluctance of people in my position to talk in detail in regard to security issues," he said.
Asked on Sydney radio if that meant that Mr Habib might be charged at some time in the future, Mr Howard said he was not foreshadowing that, "but equally I'm careful not to rule it out".
He said Mr Habib's passport had been seized and he continued to be of security interest, but apart from that he was entitled to live like any other Australian citizen.
"As to specific things in relation to appearances on programs, I mean the community will have its view not only about him but about people generally who get paid for giving their stories in relation to conduct with which the community might not approve," Mr Howard said.
Police said the break-in at the Habib home occurred between 2pm on Saturday and 12.30am on Sunday. The police are treating the burglary as a normal break-in.
- with AAP
Australia knew of my abuse - Habib
By Tom Allard
February 12, 2005/Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney man released from Guantanamo Bay has accused Australian government officials of complicity in his abduction to Egypt and brutal detention there.
The mysterious transfer to Egypt's notorious jail cells began an odyssey that Mamdouh Habib, 50, says led to him being abused for three years across three continents - including threats of anal rape by dogs.
Mr Habib, who was seized in Pakistan in October 2001 as a terrorist suspect, has identified Alistair Adams as the consular official who met him in Islamabad soon after his arrest.
He says he pleaded to be returned to Australia but was whisked away several weeks later to Egypt in a Gulfstream V jet by US agents, two of whom had distinctive tattoos, one depicting an American flag and the other a large cross.
Mr Habib, whose home has been broken into twice since his return to Australia last month, still has Mr Adams's business card and has identified him from television footage and photographs, the Herald has learnt.
Mr Adams, who is now posted in Kuwait, confirmed he had been the consular official given the task of liaising with Mr Habib and that he had been named and identified by Mr Habib since his return to Australia.
But he denied he ever met Mr Habib, saying Pakistani authorities thwarted his repeated efforts to contact him. "Habib had my business card. I gave it to the [Australian] officer who interviewed him," he told the Herald. "But I never got access to him."
He said Mr Habib's case was judged "intelligence related".
Australian Federal Police and ASIO officers interviewed Mr Habib in Pakistan, and security sources say that an ASIO officer acted as the consular go-between with Mr Habib.
Regardless of whether Mr Habib met Mr Adams or asked the ASIO officer to return him to Australia, the events raise new questions about what role Australia had in his transfer to Egypt.
Mr Habib's Australian lawyer, Stephen Hopper, yesterday refused to comment, citing the sale of Mr Habib's story to 60 Minutes, which Channel Nine will air tomorrow night.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks the US has been increasingly shifting suspects to countries with histories of brutal interrogation and torture.
Critics say the practice - which the Australian Government formally opposes - is state-sponsored abduction and allows the US to circumvent the human rights treaties it has signed.
According to Mr Habib's US lawyer, Joseph Margulies, his client alleges his interrogators routinely abused and humiliated him in Egyptian prisons.
In this month's New Yorker magazine Mr Margulies said the interrogators beat Mr Habib regularly, sometimes with an instrument he likened to an electric cattle prod.
They told him he would be raped by trained dogs if he did not confess to being a member of al-Qaeda and was, among other abuses, placed in a chamber filled with water and forced to stand on his toes for hours to avoid drowning.
They also allegedly used electric shocks to extract confessions, which Mr Habib made but later retracted.
Mr Habib's release has been linked to the fact that any evidence built up against him would not stand scrutiny because it was obtained under extreme duress and intimidation.
Mr Habib also says he was severely mistreated at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where he was taken to from Egypt on or about April 17, 2002.
He was then shifted to Guantanamo Bay, where, he says, he was subjected to more abuse, including being shackled while female US officers feigned menstruating over his face, using fake blood.
Mr Habib's supporters describe him as a peaceful and devout Muslim and family man.
However, the Government says he remains of interest amid allegations that he frequently visited Afghanistan and Pakistan and, since 1998, attended terrorist training camps.
Mr Habib denies he is a terrorist, but will not answer the allegations in detail pending possible legal action.
A spokeswoman for the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said it had not yet been established that Mr Habib was taken to Egypt, even though Pakistan's Interior Minister, Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, told SBS last July that Mr Habib was taken there after a request by US authorities.
The spokeswoman said Australians had neither been aware or endorsed the alleged transfer, and were only formally notified of his whereabouts when he arrived at Bagram air base in April 2002.
What happened in the intervening six months since he spoke with Australian officials in Pakistan remains a puzzle, the Government says.
"The position is that he may have been to Egypt but it has never been confirmed," the spokeswoman said.
She said the Government repeatedly asked what happened to Mr Habib after he vanished from Pakistan. "Quite soon after ... we made inquiries when we found out he was no longer in Pakistan." This included representations to US, Pakistani and Egyptian officials, some made at "the highest levels".
Given the strength of US-Australian relations, it is unusual for Australia not to be informed if one of its citizens had been sent to a prison in another country.
She said that if it was proved that US officials took Mr Habib to Egypt "we would make representations" to the US.
`
I'd recommend the current issue of The New Yorker to anyone who's interested in reading about the cases discussed here as well as several others.
OUTSOURCING TORTURE
a snip of the much longer article
ehBeth wrote:... Arar is suing the U.S. government for his mistreatment. "They are outsourcing torture because they know it's illegal," he said. "Why, if they have suspicions, don't they question people within the boundary of the law?" ...
.. And I suspect there will be much more damning information to emerge from former detainees in the not too distant future, ehBeth. At least your government had the decency to acknowledge Arar as a Canadian citizen & to act accordingly in representing him. Ours didn't & continues to persecute Habib after his release (with no prosecutable charges) from Guantanamo Bay, despite our prime minister supplying no evidence to the Australian public that he's acted illegally. It's dead easy for the government to get away with this in the current fearful political atmosphere. Habib will be featured on Oz 60 Minutes tonight. A risky proposition for him, I think. It will be interesting to see how the program presents his story & also how the government reacts after it.
Yep - that outsourced torture stuff has been breaking for a while now.
I have cited articles in various places.
Sixty Minutes - hmmmmmmmm - it is so sensationalist (though I believe it sometimes does do stories credibly - any watchers here?) that it is risky - but what has he to lose, really?
Whether or not he is a terrorist/wanna-be he will always be treated with suspicion - but hey, Special Branch and Asio track more people than you would believe! I have been followed at least by Special Branch a few times - quite cheerful, really - no attempt to hide - little photy of me every time I left the house - a wave - blew 'em kisses a few times...
You too would have a long file, Msolga - full of more boring details than you can imagine.
I heard Frank Moorehouse interviewed the other day - he accessed hos old files, and found much there of assistance with his autobiography and such - deadly dull minutia of all he had done.
When Dunstan here got the files opened - and sacked the Police Commissioner (remember, Msolga?) more folk had more files full of more crap (a lot of it quite inaccurate) than you could ever dream.
But of course, if any info were there establishing Habib's innocence - the government would not want it coming out - it would look soooo bad for them.
You can really tell the difference between Canada and the U.S. when you know that the newsmaker of the year on the Canadian edition of Time magazine was Maher Arar.
http://www.timecanada.com/CNOY/story.adp?year=2004
dlowan wrote:But of course, if any info were there establishing Habib's innocence - the government would not want it coming out - it would look soooo bad for them.
Of course, Deb.
What's making me absolutely furious at the moment, though, is the way that Howard is using veiled threats (of possible future legal action) in the media to gag Habib. He is making an absolute mockery of the legal processes in this country for his own political ends. This drives me absolutely nuts!
NY Times article:
Detainee Says He Was Tortured While in U.S. Custody
By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: February 13, 2005
SYDNEY, Australia, Feb. 12 - Mamdouh Habib still has a bruise on his lower back. He says it is a sign of the beatings he endured in a prison in Egypt. Interrogators there put out cigarettes on his chest, he says, and he lifts his shirt to show the marks. He says he got the dark spot on his forehead when Americans hit his head against the floor at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba ....... <cont.>
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/international/middleeast/13habib.html?pagewanted=1&th&oref=login
Crikey on Costello's apology:
Saying sorry, Cornelia Rau and Mamdoub Habib
By our hard working political desk
Terrorism, human rights and the Howard Government's approach towards incarceration remains front and centre after another lively weekend of political debate and paid interviews.
Treasurer Peter Costello's apology to Cornelia Rau on Sunday Sunrise today made John Howard look positively mean-spirited and legalistic a week earlier on Sunday sitting in the chair opposite the Sphere of Influence.
The exact quotes are instructive. Here is the Costello exchange:
Mark Riley: Treasurer, another issue, does Cornelia Rau deserve an apology from your government?
Peter Costello: Look, no-one I believe, no-one of goodwill, would be pleased with the way in which she was treated, and she was let down by the system. The system failed Cornelia Rau and it's regrettable. I'm sure all those that are responsible will say to themselves it shouldn't have happened. We should never let it happen again. That's my attitude.
Mark Riley: But should the government say sorry to her for the fact that it did happen?
Peter Costello: Well, I am sorry that it happened. I think the government is sorry that it happened.
And here is what the PM said talking to Laurie Oakes:
Sphere: Do you think this poor woman should get an apology?
John Howard: Beg pardon?
Sphere: Do you think this poor woman should get an apology?
John Howard: Well, I'd like to know the circumstances, Laurie. There are legal implications, as you know. We live in a far more litigious society now, and that puts an obligation on all of us, myself included, to get good advice before I say anything.
Says it all really, but all this talk about more traditional liberals in the Government speaking out appears almost to be a trend based on recent days and that was a very pointed contrast from the Treasurer, right up there with doing the reconciliation bridge walk five years ago.
Then you have the performance of Mamdouh Habib on 60 Minutes last night. Firstly, why didn't Nine use Richard Carleton to do the Habib interview. He is the resident expert on the Middle East and terrorism, so we suspect Habib's lawyer Stephen Hopper set the rules on who was to interview his client and insisted on the softer touch of Tara Brown.
Habib's refusal to answer the question as to what he was doing in Afghanistan will certainly count against him in the court of public opinion and he really did earn that $100,000 fee as he was asked most of the touch questions you would have expected.
The government and the spooks certainly appeared to have given the Packer flagship program a solid negative briefing on all the circumstantial evidence against Habib.
Finally, there was obviously some sort of side deal with the The New York Times because this story about Habib appeared on the web early yesterday. Whilst 60 Minutes dished out a few quotes to the Sunday papers to boost its audience tonight, The New York Times had a great deal of detail.
`
Phoenix,
Why is this relevant?
I didn't know that Mr. Habib was accused of decapitating anyone? Do you have a link to support this?
Hmmm - from todays Advertiser:
"Scientist contradicts Defence Minister over interrogation
14feb05
AN Australian intelligence official has contradicted Defence Minister Robert Hill's claim that no Australian was involved in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.
Canberra scientist Rod Barton, a member of the Iraq Survey Group, also says he saw evidence of prisoner abuse and told Australian officials of his concerns.
He said he personally interrogated Iraqi detainees at the U.S. centre for high value prisoners at Camp Cropper, not Abu Ghraib prison ? which made headlines in April following revelations of prisoner mistreatment.
In June, Senator Hill declared Defence had thoroughly reviewed all information and could confirm that Australians did not interrogate prisoners.
"Someone was brought to me in an orange jumpsuit with a guard with a gun standing behind him," Mr Barton, an expert on biological weapons, told the ABC Four Corners program which will be broadcast tonight.
"I believe it was an interrogation."
Mr Barton said he raised concerns with an Australian defence official about abuse of inmates before the incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib became public.
He said he had seen prisoners with hessian bags over their heads in solitary confinement in tiny cells. Some had abrasions to their faces which U.S. officials explained away as the result of resisting arrest. Mr Barton said that in one case, he suspected a prisoner was beaten to death.
In the program, Mr Barton describes how intelligence about Iraq's weapons program was censored to delete key conclusions and material added to make it "sexier". "
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12239294%255E911,00.html
Anyone see the Four Corners program tonight, I MISSED it!!!!
And more people coming out about puffed up intelligence.
