Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib may have been badly treated in Egypt but there was no evidence so far to support his claim he was tortured by US authorities, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.
He conceded Mr Habib may have been tortured in Egypt and did not rule out the possibility that a second American investigation might find evidence of ill-treatment in Guantanamo Bay.
“For all I know he may have been badly treated in Egypt but we don’t know because the Egyptians have still not conceded to us that they held him,” Mr Downer told the John Laws radio program.
The comments of Mr. Downer echoed selective memory, him not even admitting that it was the American authorities that took him to Egypt, not the Egyptian authority. He failed to explain why he thought it was the Egyptians who were to suddenly be blamed.
“They’ve (US authorities) done one full investigation and they’re in the process of completing a second investigation. Nothing’s turned up so far.
“Look, it might be in the next few weeks something will turn up. But so far nothing’s turned up.”
In an interview with the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes, Mr Habib stated that shortly after he was arrested in 2001 an Australian official visited him at a military airport in Pakistan and watched as he was tortured.
But Mr Habib refused to answer questions on why he went to Afghanistan and who paid for his trip, saying he would answer those questions in court when he sought to have his passport returned.
Mr Downer conceded that Mr Habib may have been tortured by Egyptian authorities but denied that an Australian official had stood by and watched.
“There’s no possibility that an Australian official was present during moments of torture,” he said.
“First of all, Mr Habib claimed that a consular officer from my department was present with him in Pakistan – well that isn’t true, that consular officer never met with him.
“Officers from other parts of the Australian government … two of them did meet him but they certainly saw no incidents of torture. Where he gets these claims from I have no idea.”
Mr Downer stopped short of saying Mr Habib was lying but said his story did not tally with intelligence assessments provided by Australian agencies.
He said Mr Habib should explain what he was doing in Afghanistan.
“I would have thought that if his stories were all the stories of an innocent man who happened to be just travelling along there in Pakistan in order to find a school for his children and dear oh me, he stumbled across bad times and how badly he’s treated, he’d have a tremendously convincing story to tell about what he’d been doing in Afghanistan, going sightseeing or meeting with some friends or whatever you do in Afghanistan,” he said.
“There are a thousand reasons why he could have been there … but the fact that he says he won’t tell why he was in Afghanistan, well you can draw your own conclusions from that.”
Mr. Downer played with this matter of Mr. Habib not admitting to why he was in Afghanistan, completely ignoring the fact that Mr. Habib had never claimed to not tell that part of the story, that he would do so in a court of law.
The intelligence community had its own views on why Mr Habib visited Afghanistan and who financed his trip, Mr Downer said.
“The whole thing is less than optimal, though, because you’ve still got him walking around the community and he’s a person of great concern to our intelligence community and obviously they’ll be monitoring his activities,” Mr Downer said.
Latest news also expose that the Australian government knew of the American CIA editing reports on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to deceive the public. One senior Australian officer objected and resigned, but the Australian government continued to participate in the deception of the public. Serious questions arise then, as to the credibility of anything much that is the official statement of Mr. Downer and his office. Civili Liberties groups are urging for an independent inquiry on the Australian Government’s direct involvement in torture of prisoners and deception of the public.