After years of failed attempts, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has won the right to sue the Australian government for complicity in his alleged torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Mr Habib was detained in 2001 in Pakistan and rendered to Egypt, and then Afghanistan under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Mr Habib alleges a host of ill treatment and abuse including, being placed in a room that slowly filled with water, subjected to electric shocks to different parts of his body, threatened with rape by dogs, sleep deprivation, forced injections, told that his family had been killed and repeated beatings1. After six months, Mr Habib was eventually taken to Guantanamo Bay where he spent three years before being released without charge. Mr Habib alleges that he saw Australian officials overseeing his ill-treatment and that the Australian government was aware of the suffering he endured. This is the basis of his lawsuit.

The government has always strenuously denied all allegations, and in the most recent case, the current government asked for the matter to be thrown out because it lacked the jurisdiction to hear matters based on the actions of foreign officials. However, in the landmark ruling, the three judges stated that torture offends the ‘ideal of common humanity’, and therefore could not be justified or sanctioned here or abroad2.

Amnesty international believes that Australia should comply with its obligations under the Convention against Torture and hold an independent investigation into the allegations of torture and ill-treatment alleged by Mr Habib. In 2008, the Committee against Torture criticised Australia for not investigating the evidence of ill treatment at the hands of US officials in the case of Mr Habib and David Hicks who was also rendered and detained in Guantanamo Bay.

Justice may be one step closer for Mr Habib. However, the scars left by years of ill-treatment and abuse will last a lifetime.

For background to the case read, Justice undone, by Helen Signy. Originally published in the Human Rights Defender magazine, April/May 2005.

References

  1. Human Rights Law Resource Centre, Australia’s Failure to Investigate Torture factsheet.
  2. Sarah Miley, Australia court rules former Guantanamo detainee can sue government, Jurist Legal News, 26th February, 2010.