Aaron Benedek, Sydney
In a major breakthrough for civil rights campaigners, the federal government announced on January 11 that Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib is to be released.
After being arrested by Pakistani police in October 2001, Habib was sent by the US military to Egypt for six months. He was transferred back to a US military base in Afghanistan and then to a military prison on the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in May 2002. Throughout his detention he has been repeatedly subjected to torture by US military interrogators, with the connivance of the Australian government.
For more than three years his wife, Maha, has had to hold her family together not knowing when, or if, her husband would ever come home. By any decent measure she is a national hero.
Despite extensive efforts by the US government to cover up its abuse and torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, the full extent of its crimes against Habib began to surface last year when his lawyer Stephen Hopper — who has never been allowed to speak with his client — met with two British citizens who were former Guantanamo detainees. They recounted to Hopper conversations they had had with Habib regarding how he was tortured in Egypt. They also described seeing US guards at Guantanamo Bay physically assaulting Habib.
In the Guantanamo Bay prison, Habib was pepper-sprayed by guards before being kicked and punched and dragged out of his cell with chains attached to his feet, one British former Guantanamo Bay detainee told Hopper.
Hopper was told that Habib had been blindfolded the entire time he was held in Egypt, given forced injections of unknown drugs, repeatedly beaten and was even told by US military interrogators that his wife and children had died.
In recently released documents filed in a US court by his US legal team, Habib alleges that while detained in Egypt he was subjected to electric shock torture while being suspended from hooks on his cell wall.
While attorney-general Philip Ruddock now claims his department "consistently urged" the United States to either bring charges against Habib or release him, Hopper told Green Left Weekly that he has seen no evidence to support such a claim.
In fact, the Australian government dismissed on numerous occasions mounting evidence that Habib was being tortured by a foreign power, and publicly defended Habib's illegal detention.
Even more disturbing is Habib's allegation to his US lawyer, Joe Margulies, that an Australian official had witnessed US guards physically abusing Habib in Pakistan. One of the guards put his foot on Habib's neck while the US guards posed for photographs before they bundled Habib onto a plane to Egypt.
Ruddock's department claims it was not at the time aware of Habib's transfer from Pakistan to Egypt.
Despite the Pentagon's decision not bring any charges against Habib and to release him, Prime Minister John Howard has ruled out compensation or even an apology to Habib. Ruddock has said that his government still regards Habib as a "terrorist" and a "security threat" and that he will be subjected to continued surveillance (harassment) when he returns to Australia. Ruddock's comments were publicly endorsed by NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr.
So determined is the government to undermine sympathy for Habib that, on announcing his imminent release on January 11, Ruddock publicly restated claims by the US government that Habib had prior knowledge of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and had trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. No evidence was offered to substantiate these claims.
"If there was an ounce of truth in the allegations against Mr Habib he wouldn't be coming home", Hopper told GLW. "My client has been vindicated. [His release] proves he is completely innocent."
The pro-war Murdoch media has joined in the government's slander campaign against Habib . The January 13 Sydney Daily Telegraph editorialised: "It is appropriate that Australian Federal Police, ASIO, NSW Police and other agencies monitor his movements closely in the months ahead to ensure he becomes a model citizen."
The January 13 Australian editorial even went so far as to congratulate the US military's "wheels of justice" which "may have turned too slow, but at least they turned".
Habib's release follows a number of legal setbacks for the US government in 2004. In July, the US Supreme Court ruled it had jurisdiction to review the circumstances of detention at the Guantanamo Bay naval base and in November, a US Federal Court held that the military commissions set up to try Guantanamo Bay detainees violated the standards required for a fair trial and ordered that the commissions be halted until the US government complied with the Geneva Conventions relating to prisoners of war.
Washington presumably concluded that bringing charges against and trying Habib in its Guantanamo Bay "kangaroo courts" would only serve to expose its gross abuses of his civil rights and the Australian government's complicity in his torture at a time when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has undermined any claim that US military guards and interrogators do not torture "terror suspects".
Habib's release will be of incalculable relief for his family. It will also help those campaigning for the US government to immediately release David Hicks, the other illegally detained Australian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay.
On March 15, the Canterbury-Bankstown Peace Group is organising a mock show-trial of David Hicks outside the attorney-general's Sydney office. Phone (02) 9793 2188 for details.
From Green Left Weekly, January 19, 2005.
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