Habib Cites Kidnap, Torture In Lawsuit
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday December 17, 2005
THE former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib is suing the Federal Government, the former director-general of ASIO Dennis Richardson, and the Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, for the alleged complicity of their officers in his kidnap, false imprisonment and torture at the hands of the US and other foreign governments.
According to Mr Habib's statement of claim, which was filed in the High Court yesterday, an Australian consular official was present when he was tortured in Pakistan in October 2001. Mr Habib, who is represented by the barristers Ian Barker, QC, and Clive Evatt, is seeking damages for his injuries and for "the mental and pyschological shock and distress" he has suffered.Mr Habib asserts that, given he was an Australian citizen, the defendants had a duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure that he should not be "kidnapped, abducted, wrongfully arrested, assaulted, tortured, unlawfully interrogated or inhumanely treated" if detained without charge by a foreign government. After spending two years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay without being charged, Mr Habib was released in January this year. In his statement of claim he says he was arrested in Pakistan in October 2001. While imprisoned there, he claims, an officer from the Australian consulate in Pakistan visited him in his cell. The consular official could quite clearly see the bruises on his face, he says. When Mr Habib said he had been assaulted and held without charge, the official allegedly told him he would never see his family again unless he co-operated.Towards the end of October 2001, Mr Habib alleges, he was forcibly taken to an airport, where he was kicked and punched by several Americans and was hit on the head with a gun by a Pakistani.He says in his statement of claim that, in the official's presence, his clothes were cut from him with scissors, and he was tortured and assaulted.
© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald