NEWS: *New York Times* publishes detailed account of torture

[Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first time that the *New York Times* has 
described in some detail the torture and humiliation of a particular suspect 
both as a subject of the policy of "extraordinary rendition" by foreign (in 
this case, Egyptian) interrogators, and at Guantanamo at the hand of American 
investigators.  --  Since the impossibility of confirming reports is 
frequently the excuse the *Times* gives for not reporting on such accounts, it 
is interesting that in this case the *Times*, noting that "Mr. Habib's claims 
of mistreatment and torture cannot be confirmed," has published them anyway, 
adding:  "many are in line with accounts from other former detainees [note 
however, the vagueness of this allusion], as well as from human rights reports 
[similarly vague] and from some government agents [also vague] involved in the 
detention system[note the euphemism]."  --  The *Washington Post* (reporters 
Dana Priest, Barton Gellman in particular) has been far in advance of the 
*Times* on the U.S. government's embrace of torture during the presidency of 
George W. Bush, beginning with a front-page story published Dec. 26, 2002, on 
Americans torturing prisoners at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37943-2002Dec25)  --  Perhaps the 
recent publication of 1249-page collection edited by Karen J. Greenberg of the 
NYU School of Law and Joshua L. Dratel of the National Association of Criminal 
Defense Lawyers, entitled *The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib* 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521853249/103-7595715-0711059) 
(Cambridge University Press, 2005) has contributed to the *Times reevaluating 
its policy.  --  For more background, see the account in the *Guardian* (UK) 
of Dec. 9, 2004, reporting that documents obtained by the ACLU show "that 
senior Pentagon officials who claimed that Abu Ghraib was an aberration were 
repeatedly informed of abuse elsewhere through official channels," and that 
military officials who tried to inform the leadership of them at the very 
height of the scandal were "threatened and harassed when they attempted to 
report the abuse." (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/1866/)  --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2252/

International

Middle East

EX-DETAINEE SAYS HE WAS TORTURED
By Raymond Bonner

New York Times
February 13, 2005
Page A01

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/international/middleeast/13habib.html?

SYDNEY, Australia -- 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."