Dnarever wrote on Jan 12^th, 2011 at 9:26am:



It is not about believing this man - it is about believing in fair reasonable and legal processes.

If he were guilty of anything charge him and convict him in a respectable legal process.

Hansard 07.

My concerns about these matters extend back to early 2002 when, as Labor spokesman on justice and customs, I first raised issues about the treatment of both Mr Habib and David Hicks. In the five years since then a great deal of information has come on the public record about the US Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary renditions program—the seizure and illegal transfer of terrorist suspects to third countries where they can be integrated outside of normal legal frameworks and indeed subjected to a range of techniques that by any definition amount to torture.
[/quote]




well for me dna and you can believe what you like..

but what should the Howard govt have done???..

even the gentleman quoted above.. doesnt say what the govt should have done..

they did approach the US govt time and again..

could they[Howard] make them change the laws made to enable them to incarserate those they saw as a threat to their nation?

would we allow the yanks for instance to get involved with the way we want to protect our nation....would you stand by for that?.


maybe Howard should have asked for a shootout with Bush..at the OK Corral

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Jan 11^th, 2011 at 1:19pm:


I guess it does. This man wasn't a "terrorist suspect" - he is an "ordinary" white man. His family had lived in the country for generations. There was no smoke to indicate the presence of fire.

I'd say it questions your entire perspective on surveillance, security and terror, A.H.

codswal wrote on Jan 12^th, 2011 at 10:59am:


I saw his story on Four Corners years ago. I can't present the details to you here.

He may well have been doing something dodgy in Pakistan, but that doesn't change the fact that he was rounded up, tortured and sent to Guantanamo.

I don't know why you'd question his account of torture. It's routine in many countries, particularly Egypt. The CIA have been outsourcing torture for years. The US military's own processes - the hoods, white noise, bright lights, nakedness, stress points, waterboarding and simulated torture or execution are the result of years of scientific experimentation in this area.

They are, of course, the second stage in the process. The first stage is transferring you to a US-friendly regime and wiring you up to a car battery or hanging you from a hook and beating you with clubs, often for months at a time: torture. Sure, Rumsfeld might claim that waterboarding, being forced to stand for 12-hour stretches, or hooking you up to a fake car battery is not torture - but the reason these techniques force people into submission so effectively is that they've already been hooked up to the real thing.

Habib's story rings true - no more than for any other reason that he's accurately described a process we already know.

I can't imagine that Habib could describe the process so well unless he had actually experienced it - and it's no leap of faith to believe that he has experienced it when it's standard operating proceedure.

The question, of course, is how effective this proceedure is when it weeds out "terrorists" like Mumdu Habib and David Hicks, but leaves Osama bin Laden somewhere in Afghanistan.

If you think Habib's story is false, it leads me to think that you don't understand the broader context of the War On Terror, and what it actually entails.

If Habib's story is false, he is a very good liar, but this doesn't change what we already know: he was detained in Guantanamo, and he couldn't possibly have been a terrorist.

"What we see here is that Howard Government knew that Habib had been renditioned to Egypt and with Aisio confirming that they were aware that he was in Egypt.

For thoes who keep saying proove that it happened - well it did :

And this is not Based on Habibs word or his story - it was known to have occured by Asio and our government at the time."


If the above was true who gives a fig. Habib is a lying parasitic scumbag muslim terrorist that the world could do without.

whatsforme wrote on Jan 12^th, 2011 at 3:02pm:


That's the spirit.

Habib does not need to prove anything now. He was willing to make his case in court. The government was not and paid him out instead. That says it all really.

whatsforme wrote on Jan 13^th, 2011 at 3:06pm:


How do you know that he did not believe that she was telling the truth?
I do not see how that puts his honesty in question.

With that one I was not sure myself, there have been cases where that sort of thing has happened.