Habib Sues Australia for Guantanamo Torture

An Australian man who was held in the Guantanamo Bay US detention camp has won the right to sue his government for complicity in his alleged treatment.

A Federal Court said he was free to sue after rejecting Canberra’s claim that an Australian judge could not rule on the actions of foreign officials.

Mamdouh Habib was released from Guantanamo without charge in 2005.

Habib’s ordeal began in October 2001, when he was arrested in Pakistan. In U.S. court documents released. Habib’s American lawyers report that he was tortured for a week in Islamabad before being transferred to Egypt, where he was detained for six months. The document describe at length a shocking array of torture techniques.

In one hideous example, Habib was suspended from hooks on a wall, his feet on a drum connected to a battery, which would send a shock through his feet. “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 …

“Inflamed by his protests and indifferent to his screams, the sessions typically ended only when he admitted whatever they were questioning him about at the time — whatever it was,” the documents added. “In the midst of horrendous torture, Mr. Habib ‘confessed’ to it all.”

Such “confessions” were than used to justify his detention in Guanánamo Bay, where he was transferred in 2002, and where the mental and physical torture continued.

Egyptian-born Mr Habib was arrested in Pakistan in 2001, accused by the US of training militants and of having prior knowledge of the 11 September 2001 attacks.

He was detained in Pakistan, Egypt and Afghanistan, before being flown to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Mr Habib says he was subjected to sleep deprivation, being burnt, electrocution and injections of drugs and that Australian officials were complicit in – and sometimes present at – the sessions.

Canberra had asked for the case to be thrown out, saying Australia could not rule on the actions of US officials.

But the Federal Court said torture “offends the ideal of a common humanity” and that Australia’s parliament had “declared it to be a crime wherever outside Australia it is committed”.

The three-judge panel said torture “can never be justified by official acts or policy”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Australian Released from Guantánamo (pdf)