Who Is Mamdouh Habib?
I covered the NY Times story about this naturalized Australian
a few posts below. Turns out
Mr Habib, who claims he was tortured in Egypt at the request of the United States, and humiliated at Guantanamo Bay, has recently become moderately wealthy:
Mr Habib also told Channel Nine, which paid a reported $200,000 for the interview...Gee, wonder how much they would have paid him if he'd said he hadn't been tortured? The good news is that he
may not be able to keep the money.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was still investigating whether such a payment to Mr Habib could be confiscated, Senator Ellison said in Perth today.
"The allegations against Mr Habib are very serious; he is a person of interest to our security organisations and I'll be looking at his interview carefully to see what is said, as will the government," Senator Ellison said.Habib was originally detained in Pakistan, where he supposedly was considering moving from Australia. Born in Egypt, he had moved to Australia in 1980, but began to sour on that country when the Australian authorities took an interest in him. Why did he
catch their attention?
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had shown an interest in her husband, she said, ever since 1992 or 1993, following a trip they made to New York to visit Mr Habib's sisters.
Mr Habib also visited Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment for attacking US targets, and was accused of being behind the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.Well, now, that is certainly a little background that the NY Times didn't bother to disclose to its readers yesterday. So Habib has reportedly met with
both of the men who organized attacks on the World Trade Center. Just a coincidence, I'm sure!
But wait, his wife has a good reason:
Maha has told the Australian media that her husband did not support Sheikh Omar's actions, but simply wanted to try and raise money to buy him medication for diabetes.
"He was isolated and sick, you know - just for human rights. It was something to do with the human rights," she told ABC.Interestingly, the torture charges related by Habib change from one article to the next. Andrew Sullivan gnashed his teeth over the reported sexual humiliation:
There's more along the same lines that we have seen time and time again, at the hands of American interrogators:But to be honest it sounds more like Mr Habib's stories have been told time and again, changing with each telling. For example, here's the story the
Times told yesterday:
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.But here's how it appeared in the
Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago:
The Australian Mamdouh Habib, who was released last month, has said he was strapped down while a woman told him she was menstruating on his face.In tomorrow's
Syndey Morning Herald:
"...he was tortured by his captors, who gave him electric shocks and threatened him with sexual assault by specially trained dogs."But according to his lawyer a
few weeks ago:
He "was beaten up, electrocuted, injected with unknown drugs, tortured," and dogs were set on him, Mr Hopper has said.Update: Tim Blair has caught
some other curiosities about Mr Habib's tales of woe.
