| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| Down Under | ||
| Habib claim: 'injected with drugs while Aussies watched' | ||
| 2007-11-28 | ||
FORMER Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib says he was injected with drugs in front of an Australian official while being interrogated in Pakistan.
A jury earlier found that an opinion piece by columnist Piers Akerman defamed Mr Habib by implying he falsely made claims about torture. Mr Habib told the court today he had been beaten with sticks, kicked and suspended by his wrists from the ceiling for hours at a time, and had been given electric shocks that were so severe he fainted. He had been deprived of sleep and blankets and served food that was so bad "you can't even smell it". Egyptian-born Mr Habib said he had been drugged during his imprisonment in Pakistan and Egypt, sometimes daily. "I feel like a crazy, I would say stuff like a mental person," he said. "I lost all my memory, I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am." Mr Habib said he had been given a needle containing drugs before his second interview in Islamabad in October 2001. "Before and in the middle (of the interview)," he told the court. A man who had introduced himself as Alastair Adams, an Australian official, had been present while this occurred, Mr Habib said. Other Australians, as well as Americans, were present at a number of other interrogations and interviews, he said.
Mr Habib was unable to go on, closing his eyes and turning away from the court when asked what his torturers did with dogs. "They tied up my hands behind my back and they put shackles on my feet, and I have to be naked," he said. "My face was on the floor because the dog (was) on the top of me, they do sexual things." Mr Habib's lawyers argue that he was "shackled, drugged and tortured" during some of his interrogations, making their content inadmissible as evidence. Nationwide News barrister Alec Leopold tendered documents in support of his case, including letters from Mr Habib to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Copies of Mr Habib's passport and travel records were also tendered, along with transcripts of various interviews with Mr Habib conducted by ASIO and federal police officers. The tendered material has not yet been released to the media, pending consent by federal intelligence agencies. Mr Leopold said a number of officers, codenamed Officer 1, 2 and 3, would be called as witnesses on Friday, and he flagged the possible need for their evidence to be heard in closed court. Justice McClellan said he was reluctant to do so. "Before I take the step of closing the court I would need to have a proper basis for doing so," the judge said. | ||
| Posted by:Oztralian |
| #6 My heart pumps piss. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-11-28 23:41 |
| #5 "I feel like a crazy, I would say stuff like a mental person," he said. "I lost all my memory, I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am." That would seem to me to invalidate everything else he might claim, but I'm funny like that. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-11-28 11:39 |
| #4 All these horrible allegations of torture seem to have "occurred" in ME hellhole jails, but habib's stay at Guantanamo gets top billing in the story. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-11-28 11:04 |
| #3 These turdballs have a bad habit of exaggerating when they talk, which can be turned against them. For example, a detailed medical exam will determine if some of what he has said is true. For example, he claims his fingers were broken. If so, an X-ray would determine if and when they were broken, within a range of time, and how they healed, with medical care or not. Most likely either his fingers haven't been broken or they were broken long before he was in custody. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-11-28 10:22 |
| #2 Who would have guessed ole Habib is a dog lover? |
| Posted by: ed 2007-11-28 07:07 |
| #1 GUESSS THAT WOULD BE BETTETER THAN HHAVINBG YOUR BHEAD CUT OFF |
| Posted by: sinse 2007-11-28 02:02 |