Torture claims embarrass Australian Government

Mamdouh Habib

CANBERRA - Australian officials knew Iraqi prisoners were being tortured and one had watched former Guantanamo Bay terror suspect Mamdouh Habib being abused in Pakistan, according to startling new allegations yesterday.

The claims were made by Habib in a paid interview on the Nine Network's 60 Minutes programme, and by a former Australian intelligence officer interviewed for last night's Four Corners current affairs programme on ABC TV.

The Government, which was last year cleared of claims it knew of torture at Baghdad's infamous Abu Graib Prison after a closed inquiry, has denied both the new allegations, although Foreign Minister Alexander Downer conceded it was possible Habib may have been mistreated in Egypt.

The new allegations emerged as the Government received another blow with a Melbourne magistrate's decision to grant bail to terror suspect Joseph "Jihad Jack" Thomas, reversing two earlier refusals to grant bail to a man accused of receiving money from al Qaeda and providing support and resources to terrorist organisations.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said he would seek advice on a possible appeal.

Ruddock was also busy yesterday fending off the claims by Habib and Rod Barton, a former officer of the Defence Intelligence Organisation who alleged Australian officials had known of the abuse of prisoners held at Camp Cropper, another prison in Iraq.

The Government has never challenged the arrest and detention of Habib, citing American intelligence of visits to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, and has implied that charges could not be laid against him in Australia only because Habib's alleged activities occurred before the passage of new anti-terror laws.

Habib's passport has been impounded since his release from Guantanamo Bay and return to Australia last month, and he remains a person of "great interest" to the domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Habib maintains that he was visiting Pakistan because he intended to move there with his family, but was arrested and tortured there, transferred to Egypt where he was again abused, and finally flown to Cuba where the abuse continued.

He told 60 Minutes that in Pakistan he was stripped by interrogators: "They put something in my bottom, I don't know what it is, and they put me in nappies and they tied me up and they make photograph for me, in front of me, and they make video."

In Egypt, Habib said, he was beaten, drugged, and subjected to electric shocks.

He said the abuse continued at Guantanamo Bay, including sexual humiliation targeting Islamic taboos by one female interrogator: "She put her hand in her privates, she take stuff of the blood and she threw it in my face."

Habib further claimed that he had been visited twice in Pakistan by an Australian official who had watched as he was beaten.

Ruddock said the allegations were not new, and had been investigated, although he would pass Habib's claims on the US officials.

"On the advice given to me, no Australian witnessed at any time in Pakistan ... the claimed torture," he told ABC radio.

The Government is also under fire following Barton's allegations that it knew of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Coalition forces before the Abu Graib scandal broke, despite repeated denials by Canberra.

Barton told Four Corners he had reported his suspicions about systematic abuse of prisoners ahead of the scandal, but had been ignored.

Angered by Defence Minister Robert Hill's statement last year that no Australians had been involved in the interrogation of prisoners, he said he and other Australian officers had been involved in the questioning of "high value" Iraqis.

"Someone was brought to me in an orange jumpsuit with a guard with a gun standing behind him," Barton said. "Of course I didn't pull any fingernails out, but I think it's misleading to say no Australians were involved.

"I was involved."