HABIB - released from US detention, but still "suspect".

Sigh. Also at issue is how Howard et al continue to get away with being discovered in lying to Parliament without being forced to resign.

It is interesting that Liddy Clark, the ex-Aboriginal Affairs Minister in Queensland's Labor government, has resigned over a fudging stories over a bottle of wine (albeit obviously reluctantly) while Howard remains - after being caught out in lies like children overboard, and this latest interrogation stuff (and extremely likely over demands to tailor Iraq intelligence prior to Iraq II) - which are extremely significant lies.

Children overboard should have been enough to destroy him.

These conservatives are deeply damaging the fabric of politics here. Which was never anything to write home about!

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McGentrix wrote:

Principles, huh?

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

Maybe a bit to do with perspectives too McG.
There are a fair chunk of Americans who hold Bush on the very same pedestal as Habib did bin Laden.
There are a fair chunk of Americans (on this very board, imagine that) who "will accuse you of every name under the sun" if you do not subscribe to their beliefs, values and politics (and I refer to those on both the right and the left with this comment).
And, there are a fair chunk of American men and women recruiting and being recruited to fight an American-style jihad--one that seeds their priciples and values throughout the world, bringing a halt to those groups and individuals who threaten the American way.

Al-Qaeda, (and if I may group them here too) the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden himself=Special interest groups, the Republican Party and George W. Bush (in no particular order).

They are both accustomed to a certain way of life, believe it's right, believe in and hope to further their values, and attempt to villify the other as they threaten the survival of their group, and will use any means possible to ensure their own survival.

They look the same to me.

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candidone1 wrote:

They look the same to me.

That's too bad.

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McGentrix wrote:

candidone1 wrote:
They look the same to me.

That's too bad.

What's too bad is your inability to see possibilities that mayexist, that may paint Bushco and his agenda in a negative light.
The man can do no wrong, and no amount of evidence is ever enough.
Seems Bush's thugs could burn your family under the guise of either State Security or some malignant form of protectionism and you'd find some way of supporting it so long as he personally denied kowledge of such an event.
It is too bad.

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*edit*
double post

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candidone1 wrote:

McGentrix wrote:
candidone1 wrote:
They look the same to me.

That's too bad.

What's too bad is your inability to see possibilities that mayexist, that may paint Bushco and his agenda in a negative light.
The man can do no wrong, and no amount of evidence is ever enough.
Seems Bush's thugs could burn your family under the guise of either State Security or some malignant form of protectionism and you'd find some way of supporting it so long as he personally denied kowledge of such an event.
It is too bad.

What a stupid thing to say. I guess Gump's mom was right.

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Hmmm - I wonder if this sort of thing ever happened at Guantanamo?

Or Egypt.....

Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: March 12, 2005

WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner.

The reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, provide the first official account of events that led to the deaths of the detainees, Mullah Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar, at the Bagram Control Point, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The deaths took place nearly a year before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Among those implicated in the killings at Bagram were members of Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C. The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there.

The reports, from the Army Criminal Investigation Command, also make clear that the abuse at Bagram went far beyond the two killings. Among those recommended for prosecution is an Army military interrogator from the 519th Battalion who is said to have "placed his penis along the face" of one Afghan detainee and later to have "simulated anally sodomizing him (over his clothes)."

The Army reports cited "credible information" that four military interrogators assaulted Mr. Dilawar and another Afghan prisoner with "kicks to the groin and leg, shoving or slamming him into walls/table, forcing the detainee to maintain painful, contorted body positions during interview and forcing water into his mouth until he could not breathe."

American military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths of Mr. Habibullah, in an isolation cell on Dec. 4, 2002, and Mr. Dilawar, in another such cell six days later, were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.

But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. Last fall, Army investigators implicated 28 soldiers and reservists and recommended that they face criminal charges, including negligent homicide.

But so far only Private Brand, a military policeman from the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cincinnati, and Sgt. James P. Boland, from the same unit, have been charged.

The charges against Sergeant Boland for assault and other crimes were announced last summer, and those against Private Brand are spelled out in Army charge sheets from hearings on Jan. 4 and Feb. 3 in Fort Bliss, Tex.

The names of other officers and soldiers liable to criminal charges had not previously been made public.

But among those mentioned in the new reports is Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, the chief military intelligence officer at Bagram. The reports conclude that Captain Wood lied to investigators by saying that shackling prisoners in standing positions was intended to protect interrogators from harm. In fact, the report says, the technique was used to inflict pain and sleep deprivation.

An Army report dated June 1, 2004, about Mr. Habibullah's death identifies Capt. Christopher Beiring of the 377th Military Police Company as having been "culpably inefficient in the performance of his duties, which allowed a number of his soldiers to mistreat detainees, ultimately leading to Habibullah's death, thus constituting negligent homiicide"
Captain Wood, who commanded Company A in Afghanistan, later helped to establish the interrogation and debriefing center at Abu Ghraib. Two Defense Department reports have said that a list of interrogation procedures she drew up there, which went beyond those approved by Army commanders, may have contributed to abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Past efforts to contact Captain Wood, Captain Beiring and Sergeant Boland, who were mentioned in passing in earlier reports, and to learn the identity of their lawyers, have been unsuccessful. All have been named in previous Pentagon reports and news accounts about the incidents in Afghanistan; none have commented publicly. The name of Private Brand's lawyer did not appear on the Army charge sheet, and military officials said neither the soldier nor the lawyer would likely comment.

John Sifton, a researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said the documents substantiated the group's own investigations showing that beatings and stress positions were widely used, and that "far from a few isolated cases, abuse at sites in Afghanistan was common in 2002, the rule more than the exception."

"Human Rights Watch has previously documented, through interviews with former detainees, that scores of other detainees were beaten at Bagram and Kandahar bases from early 2002 on," Mr. Sifton said in an e-mail message.

In his own report, made public this week, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III cited the deaths of Mr. Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar as examples of abuse that had occurred during interrogations. Admiral Church said his review of the Army investigation had found that the abuse "was unrelated to approved interrogation techniques."

But Admiral Church also said there were indications in both cases "that medical personnel may have attempted to misrepresent the circumstances of the death, possibly in an effort to disguise detainee abuse," and noted that the Army's surgeon general was reviewing "the specific medical handling" of those cases and one other.

The most specific previous description of the cause of deaths of the two men had come from Pentagon officials, who said last fall that both had suffered "blunt force trauma to the legs," and that investigators had determined that they had been beaten by "multiple soldiers" who, for the most part, had used their knees. Pentagon officials said at the time that it was likely that the beatings had been confined to the legs of the detainees so the injuries would be less visible.

Both men had been chained to the ceiling, one at the waist and one by the wrists, although their feet remained on the ground. Both men had been captured by Afghan forces and turned over to the American military for interrogation.

Mr. Habibullah, a brother of a former Taliban commander, died of a pulmonary embolism apparently caused by blood clots formed in his legs from the beatings, according to the report of June 1, 2004. Mr. Dilawar, who suffered from a heart condition, is described in an Army report dated July 6, 2004, as having died from "blunt force trauma to the lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease."

Full article at New York Times

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From:

"It never happened"

to

"It was a few isolated bad guys"

to

"They deserve it, they were terrorists"

is my guess as to how the more extreme right folk here will respond.

"And you believe him?" says JW - yes - it is beginning to look more and more likely to me that Habib was tortured/mistreated in American custody.

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Mamdouh Habib met with convicted terrorist bombers/WTC 1993
The man is not what you all portray.

Mamdouh Habib...............

Quote:

Mamdouh Habib was born in Egypt, moved to Australia in 1980, became a citizen there, married Maha, had four children, and taught Islam. He traveled to New York prior to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing during which time he visited Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (who was later sentenced to life imprisonment for attacking US targets, and being behind the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing). Various national security organizations, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), became interested in him at this point. ASIO & the Federal Police have been tapping his conversations since 1993. They allege that there is plenty of evidence to indicate he supports many atrocities committed by Muslims around the world, including the Luxor massacre in his native Egypt in 1997 where 58 innocent tourists where brutally murdered in cold blood & a young English female child was raped & then murdered. A baby was also murdered with a knife by one of the Islamic extremists. ASIO did play a recording of him praising the Islamic militants who carried out this massacre to a court in May 1999 to ensure they could continue monitoring him. The Luxor massacre was carried out by the Islamic extremist group GI of which Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman is the spiritual leader. Mamdouh Habib is a known admirer & supporter of the sheik.

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Welcome to A2K, dantethered!

Wiki certainly is the best free evailable encyclopdia, and even better, everyone can write there.

Thanks for giving the link - the full article (and the footnotes) doesn't really prove that "The man is not what you all portray.", I think.

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Oh - I portray nothing.

I have no idea of the man's guilt, or innocence. He certainly sounds like a silly man, to say the least.

The concern is with the fairness, legality and ethics, or otherwise, of his treatment.

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I couldn't agree more, Deb. And I'm certainly not portraying him as some sort of hero.

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"Jihad" Jack speaks at public meeting
March 15, 2005 - 10:04PM/the AGE

Australian terrorist suspect "Jihad" Jack Thomas celebrated his continuing freedom at a public meeting of around 150 supporters.

Earlier on Tuesday Thomas fended off a Crown move to revoke his bail and send him back to solitary confinement to await trial.

Thomas is facing charges of receiving financial support from the al-Qaeda terrorist network, providing al-Qaeda with resources or support to carry out a terrorist attack and having a false passport.

He was first arrested in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of being associated with al-Qaeda.

Thomas was released without charge in Pakistan and returned to Australia in June 2003 and was arrested during a counter-terrorism raid at his home in November last year.

He claims that he suffered physical and psychological abuse during interrogations in Pakistan.

Those issues were raised at a meeting of between 100 and 150 supporters, attended by Thomas and his family, at Trades Hall in Melbourne.

His father, Ian Thomas, told AAP the meeting canvassed the issue of human rights abuses.

"There are concerns about the use of physical and psychological abuse to get information," he said.

Mr Thomas said his family believed that Jack Thomas' case could be compromised because of the way evidence was obtained.

"Of itself, the evidence would be quite flimsy."

Thomas' younger brother Les earlier told ABC radio the tendency since the start of the war on terror was to believe it was okay to use torture to get information.

"We think torture is something that not only brutalises the victim of it but the society that condones it," he said.

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http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47374&highlight=

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msolga wrote:

I couldn't agree more, Deb. And I'm certainly not portraying him as some sort of hero.

There needs to be no sort of justification for what sort of man Habib may be. That is hardly the relevant issues at hand here. What is particularly disturbing about Habib's case is how blase Australians were about our government allowing the detention of a citizen, held by a foreign jurisdiction, without being officially charged for three entire years. Detained at a place where dubious decisions deny the fundamental right to apply for habeas corpus and a continuous avoidance of the application of Geneva Convention. I am ashamed of Australia's complicity.

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US told: deliver Hicks proof
By Tom Allard
March 28, 2005/SMH

The Federal Government has sought urgent assurances from the United States that it has enough evidence to prosecute the Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.

It is growing increasingly anxious about whether the Adelaide man will ever face trial.

Australia's ambassador to the US, Michael Thawley, was dispatched to the Pentagon last week amid delays in scheduled hearings, as well as reports of miscarriages of justice in the US military tribunals.

The New York Times has reported that US officials are considering significant changes in the military tribunal system, which was set up by President George Bush under his "war on terrorism".

Hicks, the Adelaide man captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and accused of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, is one of the four prisoners of the 540 at Guantanamo Bay to have been charged.

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said representations had been made last week to the US at a "very senior level", noting he had been repeatedly told by the US that there was a case against Hicks.

The Federal Government was "seeking expedition of the matter, and assurances from the US that they have evidence sufficient to continue with the trial", Mr Ruddock told Channel Nine's Sunday program.

"We want to know that this is a matter that is receiving their full attention."

Hicks may not face trial until next year. He was charged in August last year with attempted murder, aiding the enemy and war crimes and has been held at the US military base in Cuba for more than three years.

His lawyers are waiting to argue before a US court that his military commission trial will be unconstitutional. There are delays as other detainees are also challenging the legitimacy of the courts.

The Federal Government would be deeply embarrassed if Hicks was released without facing trial.

The Sydney man Mamdouh Habib was freed from Guantanamo after 3 years in prison, despite public US assurances he would face trial and the Government's insistence he had trained to be a terrorist bomb-maker.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post report has raised new concerns about the military tribunal system to be faced by Hicks.

Murat Kurnaz, a German Islamic missionary, was ruled by a military tribunal to be an enemy combatant even though US and German security agencies found there was no evidence of links to al-Qaeda or terrorism, the paper said. US military intelligence even concluded he had been arrested by mistake.

Instead, the paper said, the tribunal discarded this finding and focused on a short memo from an unnamed official saying he was a terrorist and had been unco-operative. That stance was criticised by Judge Joyce Green of the US Federal Court, who reviewed the case.

Mr Kurnaz remains at Guantanamo Bay more than three years after he was incarcerated.

Citing US military and government officials, The New York Times said the Pentagon was circulating a 232-page draft manual for the tribunals that would usher in "substantial changes" that would strengthen the rights of defendants, establish more independent judges and disallow confessions obtained by torture.

However, it also reported that the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was vehemently opposed to any changes and their adoption was by no means certain.

The father of David Hicks welcomed the possible changes.

"If they're going to change it like that, I think it sounds a better way of going about things," Terry Hicks told AAP. "It will be virtually down to a real court, won't it?"

A spokeswoman for Mr Ruddock said the Australian Government was confident Hicks would get a fair trial before the military commission as it stands today.

"The Australian Government would expect to be consulted on any changes to the military commission process," she said.

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Oh boy.

AND the Americans are thinking of changing the tribunal rules - responding to criticism of their blatant unfairness - which the military's OWN LAWYERS have been stating were untenable for years - unheeded by the bastid who runs the pentagon and his stooges.

"U.S. Is Examining a Plan to Bolster the Rights of Detainees
By TIM GOLDEN

Published: March 27, 2005

he Defense Department is considering substantial changes to the military tribunals that the Bush administration established to prosecute foreign terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, military and administration officials say.

The proposed changes, many of which are detailed in a 232-page draft manual for the tribunals that has been circulating among Pentagon lawyers, come after widespread criticism from the federal courts, foreign governments and human rights groups.

Advertisement

Those changes include strengthening the rights of defendants, establishing more independent judges to lead the panels and barring confessions obtained by torture, the officials said.

The draft manual has renewed a sharp debate within the Bush administration between military and civilian lawyers who are pushing to overhaul the tribunals and other officials who have long insisted that suspected terrorists held at Guantánamo are not entitled to many of the basic rights granted defendants in United States courts.

Military officials said the draft, which is modeled after the Manual for Courts-Martial, was written under the auspices of the Pentagon official in charge of the tribunals, Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., who is now retired. The proposals gained momentum after high-level discussions late last year that included officials at the Pentagon, the office of the White House Counsel and the National Security Council.

The proposals would generally move the tribunals - formally known as military commissions - more into line with the judicial standards applied to members of the American military in traditional courts-martial, officials said. Many military lawyers have privately urged such a shift since President Bush first authorized the commissions after Sept. 11.

The administration's willingness to restructure the commissions, which have been a central part of its strategy for fighting terrorism, is uncertain. Some officials said they considered the proposals premature because a lawsuit challenging the legality of the commissions is now in a federal appeals court.

In addition, some of the White House aides who supported changes to the commissions have recently moved to new jobs, leaving behind a small but powerful group of officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff, who have opposed changing to the commission rules unless forced to do so by the courts, officials said.

"There are a number of folks who would like to make changes," one Pentagon official said of the rules governing the military commissions. But, the official added, "Cheney is still driving a lot of this."

At an interagency meeting earlier this month on detainee policy, officials said, the State Department's designated legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, who was formerly the legal adviser on the National Security Council staff, raised the question of possible modifications to the commission procedures and was quickly rebuffed by Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington.

"We don't need any changes in the commissions," the officials quoted Mr. Addington as saying.

A spokesman for Mr. Bellinger, who was traveling, declined to comment. A spokesman for the vice president's office did not respond to requests for comment on Mr. Addington's views.

A spokeswoman for General Altenburg, Lt. Susan McGarvey, said, "We are always considering ways to improve the commissions process," but she declined to discuss the draft manual.

The plan to use military commissions to try terrorism suspects emerged in the weeks following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, from a small group of White House and Justice Department lawyers who consulted closely with Mr. Cheney, current and former administration officials have said.

By their own accounts, those officials sought to use the presidency's war powers to allow the military to detain, interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects who might be harder to question or convict in the federal justice system......"

Full story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/politics/27detain.html?th&emc=th

Oh - you already noted that!

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I just posted this on another thread as well <can't tell who is following particular threads and forums, so ...>

Quote:

Thirteen With the C.I.A. Sought by Italy in a Kidnapping

By STEPHEN GREY and DON VAN NATTA
Published: June 25, 2005

MILAN, June 24 - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 officers and operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency on charges that they seized an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and flew him to Egypt for questioning, Italian prosecutors and investigators said Friday.

The judge, Chiara Nobili of Milan, signed the arrest warrants on Wednesday for 13 C.I.A. operatives who are suspected of seizing an imam named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to his mosque here for noon prayers on Feb. 17, 2003.

It is unclear what prompted the issuance of the warrants, but Judge Guido Salvini said in May that it was "certain" that Mr. Nasr had been seized by "people belonging to foreign intelligence networks interested in interrogating him and neutralizing him, to then hand him over to Egyptian authorities."

Mr. Nasr, who was under investigation before his disappearance for possible links to Al Qaeda, is still missing, and his family and friends say he was tortured repeatedly by Egyptian jailers.

The detailed warrants remained sealed in a Milan courthouse on Friday. But copies obtained by The New York Times show that 13 American citizens, all identified in the documents as either C.I.A. employees or as having links to the agency, are wanted to stand trial on kidnapping charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 10 years and 8 months in prison. The Americans' whereabouts are unknown.

One of those wanted, identified in the court papers as the agency's top officer in Milan, is described as "having coordinated the mission and also guaranteeing connections and assistance to others involved in the crime." He left Milan and flew to Egypt five days after the abduction, the warrant says.

In the papers, Judge Nobili wrote that she was persuaded of the Americans' involvement in part because of evidence that their cellphones were "all interacting with one another" at the time and scene of the abduction.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been an ally of the Bush administration in the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq, had no comment on the warrants. Such judicial documents are issued independently of the government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/international/europe/25milan.html?

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Thanks for that update, ehBeth. Very interesting developments!

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Howard to urge US to try Hicks quickly
July 16, 2005 - 12:11PM/the AGE

(Australian) Prime Minister John Howard will urge US President George W Bush to ensure accused Australian terrorist David Hicks is tried by a US military commission as soon as possible.

Hicks suffered a serious blow today when the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia endorsed the controversial military commissions set up to prosecute him and other Guantanamo Bay inmates.

Mr Howard said he would raise Hicks's case when he meets with Mr Bush in Washington on Tuesday.... <cont>

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/howard-to-urge-us-to-try-hicks-quickly/2005/07/16/1121455928119.html?oneclick=true

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HABIB - released from US detention, but still "suspect".

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