[Ppnews] Victim of Rendition tortured while in US custody

[PPnews at freedomarchives.org]

February 13, 2005




Detainee Says He Was Tortured While in U.S. Custody

By RAYMOND BONNER

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YDNEY, Australia, Feb. 12 - Mamdouh Habib still has a bruise on his lower 
back. He says it is a sign of the beatings he endured in a prison in Egypt. 
Interrogators there put out cigarettes on his chest, he says, and he lifts 
his shirt to show the marks. He says he got the dark spot on his forehead 
when Americans hit his head against the floor at the prison at Guantánamo 
Bay, Cuba.

After being arrested in Pakistan in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, he was 
held as a terror suspect by the Americans for 40 months. Back home now, Mr. 
Habib alleges that at every step of his detention - from Pakistan, to 
Egypt, to Afghanistan, to Guantánamo - he endured physical and 
psychological abuse.

The physical abuse, he said, ranged from a kick "that nearly killed me" to 
electric shocks administered through a wired helmet that he said 
interrogators told him could detect whether he was lying.

Speaking publicly for the first time since he was freed two weeks ago, Mr. 
Habib, a 49-year-old Australian citizen born in Egypt, also described 
psychological abuse that seemed intended to undermine his identity - as a 
husband, a father and a Muslim man. At Guantánamo, he said, he was sexually 
humiliated by a female interrogator who reached under her skirt and threw 
what appeared to be blood in his face. He also said he was forced to look 
at photographs of his wife's face superimposed on images of naked women 
next to Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Habib's claims of mistreatment and torture cannot be confirmed, yet 
many are in line with accounts from other former detainees, as well as from 
human rights reports and from some government agents involved in the 
detention system. In addition, Australian officials confirm Mr. Habib's 
movements during his confinement, including his imprisonment in Egypt, 
where his lawyers say the United States sent him for harsh interrogation 
through a process known as rendition.

There is a part of his experience that Mr. Habib will not address, the 
months before the Sept. 11 attacks when Australian intelligence officials 
say Mr. Habib trained at two camps for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The 
officials also said Mr. Habib told his wife in a phone call just days 
before Sept. 11 that something big was going to happen in the United 
States. Mr. Habib said he planned to sue the Australian government for not 
protecting him, and then, "I will answer every single question in a court."

American officials said he admitted to training some of the Sept. 11 
hijackers and to having prior knowledge of the attack, but they never 
charged him. Mr. Habib said any confessions he made were a result of 
torture and were not genuine.

"Whatever they wanted me to sign," he said, "I signed to survive."

Despite his activities in Afghanistan, Australian officials said there was 
no evidence that he trained any of the hijackers. One official said, "I 
have absolutely no sympathy for him," but added that whatever he did, it 
did not justify the torture he said he had endured.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Plexico, declined to address Mr. 
Habib's specific claims, saying in a statement that there was no evidence 
that any Australian in Defense Department custody "was tortured or abused." 
The C.I.A. declined comment and the embassies of Egypt and Pakistan in 
Australia did not responded to questions.

Mr. Habib recounted his story, previously outlined in legal papers, during 
interviews with The New York Times, with his Australian lawyer, Stephen 
Hopper, present much of the time. Mr. Habib also spoke with the Australian 
television news program "60 Minutes," which paid him an undisclosed amount 
for the interview, people involved in the arrangements said.

He said that during months and months of detention: "I don't feel anything 
anymore. I want to die." This week, standing at the water's edge north of 
Sydney, looking out at an expanse of sailboats and the green woods beyond, 
he said, "Until now, I believe I'm dreaming."

Drawn to Militant Islam

Mr. Habib was arrested in early October 2001 on a bus to Karachi, where he 
was to catch a flight home. For several years he had been growing 
increasingly militant in his Muslim faith, and he had gone to Pakistan, he 
had told friends in Australia, to find a religious school for his children.

Mr. Habib, who Australian intelligence officials knew as a committed 
follower of militant Islam ideology, was detained in a prison in Islamabad. 
Australian officials said their investigators questioned Mr. Habib in 
Pakistan, along with American interrogators.

When the sessions began, Mr. Habib said, an American woman, who spoke both 
Arabic and English, asked the questions: Had he been to Afghanistan? Whom 
did he know there? He was shown pictures. Did he know these men?

He said he was defiant and told his interrogators: "I don't have to talk to 
you. I don't know who you are."

He said the American woman told him "this is your last chance," and that an 
Australian official said, "I'm sorry for you, Mr. Habib, you're never going 
to see your kids anymore."

Mr. Habib said he was taken to a room with hooks on the wall and a barrel, 
set sideways like a roller, on the floor. His arms were stretched out, he 
said, and each wrist was handcuffed and fastened to a hook on the wall. By 
his description, the only way not to be left hanging was to stand on the 
barrel; an electric wire ran through it. Mr. Habib said he believed the 
interrogators in that room were Pakistani.

Mr. Habib said that when he refused to confess to being part of a 1995 
terror plot, one man turned on the current. He lifted his feet to avoid the 
shock, he recalled, and he was suspended from the wall.

"I lost everything," he said. He doesn't know how long he was unconscious, 
but he said that when he came to, he again refused to confess to terrorism. 
While he was still hanging from the wall, another man, who said he was a 
martial arts expert, came in and, Mr. Habib said, "starts jump-kicking in 
my face, jump-kicking in my stomach."

The next night, he said, the Pakistanis took him to an airport where he saw 
15 or 20 beefy men wearing masks, black T-shirts and combat boots. From 
their voices, he said, he knew they were Americans. Mr. Habib started to 
fight with the Pakistanis, he recalled, and "then the Americans came and 
started beating me."

They beat him quiet and stripped him naked, he said. Men in black masks 
came into the room. One had a still camera, the other a video camera. "They 
make picture of everything in my body," he said.

He said he was handcuffed and shackled and put on a plane. Then, he said, 
the men put duct tape over his mouth, a bag over his head and goggles over 
the bag.

In November 2001, Maha Habib received a fax from the Australian Foreign 
Ministry. "We remain confident that your husband is detained in Egypt," it 
said, adding that "the government has received credible advice that he is 
well and being treated well."

Family Ties as Torture Tools

Mr. Habib's lawyers have alleged that he was sent to Egypt as part of the 
rendition program, which the United States has used increasingly to 
transfer terror suspects to countries where they can be interrogated, 
sometimes using practices not allowed in the United States, according to 
American diplomats and C.I.A. officers. In recent months, several stories 
have emerged of men who say they were the subject of renditions and 
complain of being mistreated by their captors.

One frequent destination for renditions, those officials say, is Egypt, 
which has a history of torture. In its 2003 human rights report, the State 
Department said "there were numerous credible reports that security forces 
tortured and mistreated detainees."

"Welcome to Egypt," Mr. Habib said he was greeted in Arabic when he arrived 
at a prison. The interrogation began almost immediately, he said. Were you 
in Afghanistan? Whom did you know there? Why were you there?

When he refused to answer, Mr. Habib said, the interrogators told him: "We 
have here two ways to make people talk. Nicely, what we're talking to you 
now. But we have another way."

Then someone kicked him, he said. "This kick nearly killed me. I jumped 
maybe three, four meter."

Mr. Habib said that his chief interrogator spoke Arabic and English and 
later appeared in Afghanistan when Mr. Habib was held there. He said that 
during interrogations, he was surrounded by men who hit him and doused him 
with ice water.

During what he called "the worst day in my life," Mr. Habib said an 
interrogator told him: "Mamdouh, I've got your family here - you're going 
to talk to us.' " The interrogator taunted him with the possibility of 
seeing his wife and four children. Mr. Habib said that in his delirium, he 
believed they were there. When he realized they were not, he said, "I 
became crazy."

He said he jumped up, still shackled to a chair, and attacked the interrogator.

He said he was dragged from the room, handcuffed. "And they hang me from 
the ceiling," he said. "They got sticks and everyone, they go on beating 
me." He lifted his shirt to show the bruise on his back. "I want to die," 
he said.

Touched by Female Soldiers

After several months in Egypt, his treatment improved. Then, he said, he 
was driven to the airport, where he was taken by men Mr. Habib described as 
"fully Americans."

In April 2002, the Australian government issued a statement saying Mr. 
Habib "was being held in custody by the United States military in 
Afghanistan." He said other detainees told him he was at the Bagram air 
base, an American detention site.

In Afghanistan, he said, female soldiers "touched me in the private areas" 
while questioning him. "They was swearing at me, 'you criminal,' 'you 
terrorist,' " he said. Interrogators also put a helmet connected to wires 
on his head, Mr. Habib said. When they did not like his answers, he said he 
would feel a jolt, and his body would start shaking.

He spent only a week at Bagram before being flown to Guantánamo in May 
2002. He arrived sick and faint. "I was really scared," he said. "I don't 
know who I am."

When his interrogators asked about his treatment in Egypt, he said, he told 
them about the psychological abuse using his wife and children. Soon, he 
said, his Guantánamo interrogators were doing the same.

Three or four times, he said, when he was taken to an interrogation room, 
there were pictures doctored to make it appear that his wife was naked next 
to Osama bin Laden. "I see my wife everywhere, everywhere," he said.

He said that during one interrogation session, a woman wearing a skirt said 
to him, "You Muslim people don't like to see woman," he said. Then she 
reached under her skirt, Mr. Habib said, pulling out what he described as a 
bloody stick. "She threw the blood in my face," he said.

There have been other reports of sexual humiliation at Guantánamo, one from 
an F.B.I. agent who reported seeing a female Army sergeant rub lotion on a 
detainee's arms and grab his genitals, according to government documents 
released to the American Civil Liberties Union.

At Guantánamo, Mr. Habib was also interrogated by Australian investigators 
who hoped to learn enough from the Americans to prosecute him, Australian 
officials said. But, one of them said, "all they had was that he was caught 
on the bus, and whatever he gave up under 'extreme circumstances' in Egypt."

When the Americans decided last month not to charge Mr. Habib, the 
Australians sought his release. With Mr. Habib back home, Australian 
officials have revoked his passport and say they intend to monitor him closely.

A few days ago, Mr. Habib said, he gathered his family and told them 
everything that had happened since he left Sydney in July 2001. Just in 
case something bad happens to him, he said, "I want them to know fully 
everything."

<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>Copyright 2005 
<http://www.nytco.com/>The New York Times Company |



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