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<font size=3><br><br>
</font><h5><b>February 13, 2005<br><br>
<br>
</b></h5><h2><b>Detainee Says He Was Tortured While in U.S.
Custody</b></h2><font size=2><b>By RAYMOND BONNER <br><br>
</b></font><img src="cid:6.1.2.0.2.20050214054906.020f0e40@66.103.156.66.1" width=29 height=35 alt="1c25bf.gif"></b><font size=3>YDNEY,
Australia, Feb. 12 - 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"Whatever they wanted me to sign," he said, "I signed to
survive."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
<b>Drawn to Militant Islam<br><br>
</b>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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?<br><br>
He said he was defiant and told his interrogators: "I don't have to
talk to you. I don't know who you are."<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
<b>Family Ties as Torture Tools<br><br>
</b>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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
"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?<br><br>
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."<br><br>
Then someone kicked him, he said. "This kick nearly killed me. I
jumped maybe three, four meter."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
He said he jumped up, still shackled to a chair, and attacked the
interrogator.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Touched by Female Soldiers<br><br>
</b>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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
<div align="center"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html">Copyright
2005</a> <a href="http://www.nytco.com/">The New York Times Company</a>
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