For the last three years, two Australian citizens have been imprisoned without trial, tortured and defamed by another country's government in clear contravention of international law and all standards of basic humanity. On January 28, one of these men was released, without being charged with a criminal offence, and returned, a little greyer and thinner, to his family in Bankstown.
In any rational, free or democratic society, the treatment that Mamdouh Habib has received would warrant at least a warm welcome, support in recovering from his injuries — physical and psychological — and a determined government pledge to bring his torturers to justice and punish the regime that so abused him.
But Habib's reception was very different. He can look forward to being treated like the criminal that no-one has been able to prove he is. Under the terms of his return, he is forbidden to travel outside Australia. Liberal attorney-general Philip Ruddock has already confirmed that Habib will be under surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police. NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has confirmed that the NSW police will join their fellow spooks in Habib's harassment.
Ruddock is working overtime to imply that Habib is a terrorist, who just can't be prosecuted because terrorism wasn't illegal in 2001. This is bullshit.
In the first place, Habib claims that he was never a member of al Qaeda. No court of law has proved him wrong, and we do not even know on what basis the US government claimed he was. Given the number of people still detained in Guantanamo Bay, if the US believed him to be connected to al Qaeda it is likely that he would still be imprisoned.
In the second place, being a member of an organisation, even supporting a particular brand of fundamentalism, should not be a crime. It is a thought crime, from the pages of George Orwell's dystopian visions, and its criminalisation is a scandal. Being involved in a conspiracy to commit mass murder was illegal before the new draconian "terror laws" came in. If Habib had conspired in the 9/11 bombings, he could be charged and tried. That he has not been is a certain indication that the government has no evidence that he was involved.
Habib will undoubtably need first-class medical attention. His ordeal involved not only living in a cage, sensory deprivation and being denied basic information about where he was or what day it was, but also being beaten, electrocuted, immersed in water and having someone menstruate on his face.
At the very, very least, the government should be paying for such top class medical care: but instead, Ruddock is trying to keep Habib and his family as poor as possible. The government chose to spend $250,000 on a chartered flight rather than using commercial services to fly Habib home, but is attempting to twist "profiting from crime" laws to prevent Habib from getting some cash from the tabloids that have been besmirching his character.
The demonisation of one of Australia's most abused citizens comes not because the government fears Habib is a dangerous terrorist. It comes because it believes he is a dangerous living reminder of how brutal the government's US allies really are, and of how Australia's parliamentarians sold some of the most basic freedoms of all citizens down the river when it passed the horrendous terrorism laws. Australians must fear Habib, Ruddock thinks, lest we feel solidarity with him.
It is laudable that "new" Labor leader Kim Beazley has emphasised that Habib should not be imprisoned. However, his argument that releasing Habib shows that "the Americans now agree with Labor", is atrocious — unless the Labor Party agrees with Washington that it is okay to torture people for years, then provide them no compensation or apology.
One thing Ruddock and his allies in the corporate media are right about: Habib has not received justice. That is why we must be demanding decent compensation, an end to the police and spook harassment and, most of all, that the governmentr insists the other Australian citizen in Camp X-Ray, David Hicks, be brought home immediately and the US prison camp closed.
From Green Left Weekly, February 2, 2005.
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