 SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister John Howard indicated Monday his government could still seek to prosecute terror suspect Mamdouh Habib, who in turn has threatened to sue authorities over his treatment during three years of detention without trial by the US at Guantanamo Bay. Habib, an Egyptian-born resident of Sydney, was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and held by the US for alleged links to the Al Qaeda terror network.
| I've got a great idea. Why not kick him out of the country, so he can be an Egyptian-born resident of Cairo? |
He returned home last last month after being released without charge from Guantanamo Bay and has since been trying to recover his passport, which was revoked by authorities on security grounds. Howard said Habib remained of interest to Australia's security services. Asked if the government would seek to charge Habib with a crime, Howard said: "I'm not foreshadowing that, but equally I am careful not to rule that out." "The reason that he has not been charged, as yet, under Australian law is that some of the offences, or the activities, rather, that he's alleged to have undertaken, were not criminal at the time they were undertaken, although similar activities are now crimes under Australian law." |