OUR COMMON CAUSE
Australian government complicity in torture
16 June 2007
“The ABC’s Four Corners program on June 11, ‘Ghost Prisoners’, was a powerful exposure of the United States’ global torture network and of Australian complicity in it”, said Socialist Alliance spokesperson Raul Bassi. “It’s another step towards justice for Mamdouh Habib, one of the victims of this criminal system that has tortured some to death, forced others into worthless ’confessions’ and disappeared hundreds.”
Bassi called for an independent commission to investigate the real role of the Australian government in the Habib case. “Only if we have a commission like Tony Fitzgerald’s investigation of police corruption in the Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland will we get to the bottom of Australia’s complicity in the obscene treatment of Habib — and of David Hicks”, he said.
Bassi, who was Habib’s election campaign manager in the seat of Auburn in the March NSW state election, stressed that the ABC program confirmed what everyone familiar with Habib’s case had known all along — that Australian government representatives, from foreign minister Alexander Downer, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and federal police commissioner Mick Keelty down, had lied for years about their knowledge of the case.
Bassi explained that Habib’s life had been one continuous nightmare since he was the victim of CIA “rendition” to Egypt in 2001. “Still today Habib and his family are the victims of police and media harassment.”
Bassi added: “Mamdouh is asking the Australian government for an apology and an admittance he had done nothing wrong. That is the very least he deserves. The Habib family is owed full compensation for the injustices they have suffered at the hands of the US and Australian authorities. That process can begin straight away with the return of Habib’s passport.”
The movement in support of justice for the Habib family will be seeking support for its call for an independent commission from all members of parliament who wanted to see justice done, Bassi said. “We’re also calling on the Coalition government and the Labor opposition to commit to cutting all Australian ties with the US government’s ‘rendition’ program and its associated system of secret and open jails, in particular that at Guantanamo Bay.”
