Guantanamo, April 26: FORMER Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib told Egyptian interrogators under “extreme duress” he planned to hijack a Qantas plane and had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks on the United States, according to newly-released WikiLeaks files.
The documents also allege fellow Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks was approached to become a martyr by al-Qa’ida’s number three in charge of military operations, but refused the invitation.
Mr Habib’s Guantanamo prisoner file appears to confirm he was tortured by Egyptian authorities in 2001, making a raft of “admissions” which he later recanted.
In its latest high-profile information release, WikiLeaks has begun releasing 779 secret files from the United States’ notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
The 2004 files classified both Mr Habib and Mr Hicks as “high risk” detainees, with Mr Habib’s file alleging “violent behaviour” by him towards US guards.
Mr Hicks’ file describes him as a “compliant” but “deceptive”. He was held in “high regard” by other detainees, including senior al-Qa’ida operatives.
“The detainee is highly-trained, experienced and combat-hardened, which makes him a valued member and possible leader for any extremist organisation,” it says of Mr Hicks, who was returned to Australia in 2007 after being convicted by a US military commission of providing material support for terrorism.
In an analysts’ note on Mr Hicks’ file, it says: “Mohammed Atef, al-Qa’ida’s No. 3 in charge of military operations, approached detainee regarding his willingness to be a martyr, which the detainee declined.”
In his book, Guantanamo: My Journey, Mr Hicks tells how he left Australia in November 1999 and signed up with the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, to join “the freedom struggle in Kashmir”.
After he had completed a beginner’s training course, LET sent him to Afghanistan for further training.
He said he reluctantly did a beginners’ course and denied doing any terrorism-related training.
The September 11 attacks occurred a month after Hicks’s final course, when he was in Pakistan.
He went back to Afghanistan after leaving his passport behind, he said, and joined up to fight with the Taliban to defend himself as the US attacked the country.
Mr Habib, who plans to sue the Egyptian government over his detention and alleged torture, told interrogators in Cairo he was en route to hijack a Qantas plane when he was detained, and had information on his home computer on poisoning US rivers.
He also claimed to have trained six of the 9/11 hijackers in martial arts and how to use a knife disguised as a cigarette lighter.
Once at Guantanamo Bay, Mr Habib retracted the confessions, saying he lied to Egyptian interrogators.
Mr Habib was released without charge from Guantanamo Bay in 2005 and returned to Australia.
His file says he had “direct and personal access” to a senior al-Qa’ida official but his US interrogators said his real value to the hardline Islamist terror group was as an Australian organiser and operative.
It contains a note by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo that Mr Habib was regarded as a detainee of “high intelligence value”.
It says he refused to take a polygraph test.
US intelligence officials regarded Mr Habib as a high value asset for his knowledge of al-Qa’ida financing, safe houses, and its training and tactics.
They questioned whether he was a “money courier and terrorist operations facilitator”, given his extensive international travel.
“Among the questions that remain unanswered: how did he afford to travel as extensively as he did while being unemployed and having lost a great deal of money in the matter of his Australian government contract?
“What were the actual number of times he went to Afghanistan, Egypt and the US (records indicate that he entered the US prior to 1993).”
After being arrested in Pakistan, Mr Habib was “rendered” by the CIA to Egypt.
He has described being tortured there by beatings, cigarette burns, electrocution, fingernail removal and near-drowning.
Mr Habib has alleged that Australian officials were involved in his rendition and torture.
After being transferred from Egypt, Mr Habib spent four years in Guantanamo Bay before being released in January 2005.
Mr Habib was last year refused a new passport on the grounds that ASIO still considered him a threat.
His lawyers said the decision was ridiculous, and based on unproven claims.
Mr Habib’s case against Egypt’s new vice-president, Omar Sulaiman, is seen as a human rights test case of the post-Mubarak era in Egypt.
Cairo lawyers acting for Mr Habib have notified the Egyptian Attorney-General they are launching proceedings against General Sulaiman, who heads Egyptian intelligence, along with the country’s former interior minister, Habib al-Adly, and Jamal Mubarak, the son and lieutenant of former president Hosni Mubarak, who resigned amid anti-regime protests in February.
A summary filed by the Cairo lawyers says Mr Habib was detained without charge for six months and subjected to “the most horrible torture methods” including electric shock, cigarette burns, attack by dogs, sexual violation and water torture.
The documents allege some of Mr Habib’s interrogations were conducted personally by General Sulaiman, who has been Egypt’s intelligence chief since 1993, and that torture occurred in the presence of Jamal Mubarak, who was a senior official in the ousted regime.
Mr Habib received a confidential payout from the Australian government after a legal case in which he accused the government of aiding and abetting his torture by foreign agents in Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
The Australian government has refused to disclose how much it paid Mr Habib.
–Agencies