I'm reposting. I put it up late last night. This news story is now on Yahoo's home page. And the Gonzales hearing is live on CSPAN.
Gonzales just assured the senators that "I'm not naive and weak."
Try six months in Egypt's prisons, Alberto, and tell us how weak you'll feel. I'm pissed. And immeasurably upset about the depths we've sunk to as a nation.
The Australian, New York Times and Washington Post carry stories about newly disclosed court petitions in the case of Mamdouh Habib (photo above right, with wife), an Australian citizen and detainee at Guantanamo.
Habib's attorney has petitioned a New York federal district court to halt U.S. plans to return him to Egypt where he claims he will be tortured (again).
Habib's case is only the second to describe a secret practice called "
rendition," under which the CIA has sent suspected terrorists to be interrogated in countries where torture has been well documented.
Washington Post
Details of Torture & Accusations Below
Habib was
arrested in Pakistan on Oct. 5, 2001, detained in Afghanistan, transferred to Egypt to be tortured, sent back to Afghanistan, then to
Guantanamo Bay prison in May 2002.
The Post reports that Habib is a "suspected al Qaeda trainer." His wife, who lives in Sydney, Australia with the couple's children, claims that Habib -- of interest to Australian intelligence since he had contact with a suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center -- was in Pakistan in Oct. 2001 to search for a Muslim school for his sons.
The Australian's lead is that newly released court documents reveal that an Australian official -- introduced as an "Australian consular official" -- "stood by and watched while US agents tortured and humiliated Australian terror suspect Mamdouh Habib, a newly released legal document alleges today." Doesn't the following sound like Abu Ghraib?
Mr Habib was handcuffed throughout ...
at an airfield in Islamabad about October 29, 2001.
"The person with his foot on Mr Habib's neck explained, in unaccented American English, that he planned to send one picture to his girlfriend and another to his sister," it said.
"After this gratuitous photo shoot, they brought Mr Habib to his feet. When they did, Mr Habib saw both the American and Australian men who had been present at (an earlier interrogation)."
" Official 'watched Habib torture'," The Australian
The Washington Post article, written by Dana Priest and Dan Eggen, focuses on the issue of rendition and Habib's ordeal in Egypt before his transfer to Guantanamo in 2002:
U.S. authorities in late 2001 forcibly transferred an Australian citizen to Egypt, where, he alleges, he was tortured for six months before being flown to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to court papers made public yesterday in a petition
seeking to halt U.S. plans to return him to Egypt.
... while under Egyptian detention he was hung by his arms from hooks, repeatedly shocked, nearly drowned and brutally beaten, and he contends that U.S. and international law prohibit sending him back. [more about the torture below]
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
I don't know if Habib is a terrorist or not. It's clear that Australian and U.S. officials were very concerned about his movements and contacts. He may well be involved in some terrorist activities:
ASIO's [Australian intelligence] attention began after a trip to America, where he met, and received phone calls from, a man who was later convicted of being an accessory in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. It is normal practice that such leads be followed, ... But ASIO continued to harass, and complaints were made to the Attorney-General, lawyers were involved ... harassment continued. For 8 years ASIO watched and questioned him, but never found any criminal activity. ...
Prisoners without Trials, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Australia
Maha, Habib's wife, says his motives in 1993 were humanitarian:
ASIO has been following us since 1992 or 1993 when we went to America to visit his sisters over there. First we went to Egypt then after Egypt we went to New York.
(Maha is talking about a man they met in New York, who was later charged with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center) We heard the man was isolated in a gaol and he was a diabetic and blind, and he wasn't receiving his medication. [NEWS JUNKIES: Is she talking about the blind sheik?] It really got to us and my husband wanted to help. And maybe he has done a crime but he still has human rights, and my husband applied to the police ... to see if we could collect the money for him and send it for medication. ... From Prisoners without Trials
Maha says her husband went to Pakistan in October 2001 to check out schools for their two sons. (Odd timing for such a trip.)
Habib's attorney, Joseph Margulies, explains:
Habib had moved to Australia in the 1980s but eventually decided to move his family to Pakistan. He was there in late 2001 looking for a house and school for his children, Margulies said.
WaPo
But, the Post article continues, "U.S. officials accuse Habib of training and raising money for al Qaeda, and say he had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Australian media have reported that authorities in that country cleared him of having terrorist connections in 2001. ...
The Torture in Egypt That Brought Such Confessions
Habib was flown to Egypt where he spent six months in a barren cell, sleeping on a concrete floor with one blanket.
During interrogations, Habib was "sometimes suspended from hooks on the wall" and repeatedly kicked, punched, beaten with a stick, rammed with an electric cattle prod and doused with cold water when he fell asleep, the petition says.
He was suspended from hooks while his feet resting on the side of a large cylindrical drum attached to wires and a battery, the document says. "When Mr. Habib did not give the answers his interrogators wanted, they threw a switch and a jolt of electricity" went through the drum, it says. "The action of Mr. Habib 'dancing' on the drum forced it to rotate, and his feet constantly slipped, leaving him suspended by only the hooks on the wall . . . This ingenious cruelty lasted until Mr. Habib finally fainted."
At other times, the petition alleges, he was placed in water-filled rooms where he had to stand on tiptoe for hours to avoid drowning, or in ankle-deep water that his interrogators told him "was wired to an electric current, and that unless Mr. Habib confessed, they would throw the switch and electrocute him."
Habib says he gave false confessions to stop the abuse.
The State Department's annual human rights report has consistently criticized Egypt for practices that include torturing prisoners.
WaPo
The Other Australian
Mamdouh Habib's arrest, "unlike that of David Hicks, is the story of a man travelling in a country not at war, and without warning being arrested, transferred, and treated as an illegal combatant, despite the fact that he was never any kind of combatant." Prisoners without Trials
The Sundance Channel recently aired a documentary, The President Versus David Hicks, about the other Australian detainee at Guantanamo.
(Photo right of Habib and Hicks, before their detainment.)
The Sundance description:
The father [photo right] of a young Australian who embraced fundamentalist Muslim ideals, and came to be labeled a "unlawful combatant" by President Bush, retraces his son's journey from Adelaide to Guantánamo Bay in this compelling documentary by Curtis Levy.
With excerpts from letters to family and friends and interviews with a former Guantánamo detainee and a Northern Alliance commander, this disturbing and thought-provoking film contemplates the transformation of a naïve horse trainer and rodeo rider into an anti-Semitic acolyte. TV14 (AC, AL)
Sundance Channel
IMDb link
Additional resource for you: Cageprisoners.com "is a web-site that exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of the cage prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, through effective legal means. The web-site is not aligned to any Islamic group or organisation. The site is run by individual Muslim volunteers who have come together for the reasons set out below." Note: I know nothing about the accuracy of material on this site, but am sharing it because it has photos of many of the detainees.
Is This How We Wish to Win the "War on Terror"?
From the New York Times article:
It is unclear from the court papers if the American government is planning to transfer him to Egypt, as his lawyer asserts. But the case is
one of the rare instances in which the practice known as rendition, in which a prisoner is transferred to the custody of another government, may be openly considered by a federal court.
The administration has given little information about whether or when it engages in the practice, which could violate international law if a government had reason to believe that the government receiving the prisoner might use torture.
... During his imprisonment, he confessed to several crimes, and his lawyer said that those coerced confessions had been used by American military authorities at Guantanamo to deem Mr. Habib properly detained there as an unlawful enemy combatant.
Shouldn't all cases of rendition, at the very least, be "openly considered" by a court of law? Or why not return him to Australia?
(Emphases in all quotes are mine.)