Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured and tortured in the years after September 11 in both Egypt and Guantanamo Bay. For years, “war on terror” supporters defamed Habib and claimed he was lying about his allegations of mistreatment. However last year in just one case against the Australian Murdoch press, he won a small victory:…
The cases of two former Australian Guantanamo Bay prisoners, Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, have received fresh oxygen after the release of their files by Wikileaks today. I’ve extensively covered them both over the years (Habib and Hicks) and one thing stands out; the sheer dishonesty of Western defenders of the policy and the callous…
Finally the mainstream media catches onto the important case of tortured Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib (who I exclusively interviewed last week): Damning evidence from an Egyptian intelligence officer that names an Australian official who witnessed the torture of Sydney man Mamdouh Habib in Guantanamo Bay has been revealed as the trigger for a hushed-up government…
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: According to Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian ambassador to the US, Hosni Mubarak has now transferred all powers to his recently appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman. Despite a barrage of speculation that Mubarak was going to step down overnight”‰—”‰including comments from head of the CIA, which makes one…
My weekly Guardian column: The details shocked. Shackled prisoners were treated like cattle, watched by their CIA interrogators. Testimony from one observer stated that men blindfolded and tied “were made to run down a steep hill, at the bottom of which were three throws of concertina barbed wire. The first row would hit them across…
My weekly Guardian column is published today: It’s hard to think of an Australian individual since 9/11 who has experienced more humiliation and abandonment by the federal government than… David Hicks. Julian Assange, who declared he felt abandoned by the Australian government, perhaps… comes close. As they both found out, an Australian passport is no guarantee of…
This week saw the death of former Egyptian intelligence head and thug, Omar Suleiman. Closer to Mubarak during his time in power, he was courted by Israel and America while his record of enabling terror was ignored. Of course. Australian citizen and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib alleges Suleiman personally attended sessions when he…
Two views, one from here in Australia and the other on the global scene. From my perspective, the last decade has brought both remarkable levels of carnage by both Western actions and Islamists but also a growing awareness of where the real threats reside, and it isn’t from some men in a cave in Afghanistan…
My following article appears in today’s ABC The Drum: The Wikileaks-released Guantanamo Bay files provide an invaluable insight into the mindset of the US and its allies since September 11. An infrastructure of torture was implemented, a practice still defended by the US government today, to allegedly protect the homeland from future attack. The result…
I appeared last night on ABCTV News 24’s The Drum alongside ABC journalist Marius Benson and lobbyist Sue Cato (video here). While China, we learn via Wikileaks, ignores Australia’s supposed concerns for human rights, I asked if Prime Minister Julia Gillard actually cared about human rights as there had been no public comments from her…