"AUSTRALIAN counter-terrorism authorities had no evidence that Mamdouh Habib had taken part in terrorist-related activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan before he was abducted by the US and taken to Egypt and Guantanamo Bay, an ASIO agent told the NSW Supreme Court yesterday.
The ASIO officer, who interviewed Mr Habib three times in Islamabad in 2001, was testifying yesterday in a defamation case involving Mr Habib and the News Limited columnist Piers Akerman.
Officer 1, as the ASIO officer is codenamed, told Justice Peter McClellan that, before conducting the interviews, he knew only that Mr Habib had been in Pakistan and Afghanistan about the time of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"He may have been in Afghanistan for a number of reasons," Officer 1 said. "What he was doing, I did not know … that was the purpose of the interview."
He was none the wiser after the interviews as Mr Habib's "failure to answer the questions did not illuminate [his activities]".
He said there were suspicions - unfounded, it later emerged - that Mr Habib was involved in the September 11 attacks.
"It was a possibility but by no means the only possibility," Officer 1 told the court.
Within a month of the interviews taking place, Mr Habib was abducted by Pakistani and US officials and flown to Egypt, which has a prison system notorious for using torture.
Mr Habib spent about six months there, and has detailed extensive mistreatment, including being regularly beaten, subjected to electric shocks, deprived of sleep and left in neck-high water for extended periods.
Officer 1 said he was aware now that Mr Habib had been taken to Egypt but he had had no role in the abduction and would have stopped it if he could."
Labels: new fascism, torture
