RIGHTS TRASHED

Freed detainee Habib says he was tortured throughout US custody

Mamdouh Habib still has a bruise on his lower back. He says it is a sign of the beatings he endured in a prison in Egypt. Interrogators there put out cigarettes on his chest, he says, and he lifts his shirt to show the marks. He says he got the dark spot on his forehead when Americans hit his head against the floor at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
After being arrested in Pakistan in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, he was held as a terror suspect by the Americans for 40 months. Back home now, Mr. Habib alleges that at every step of his detention - from Pakistan, to Egypt, to Afghanistan, to Guantánamo - he endured physical and psychological abuse.
The physical abuse, he said, ranged from a kick "that nearly killed me" to electric shocks administered through a wired helmet that he said interrogators told him could detect whether he was lying.
Speaking publicly for the first time since he was freed two weeks ago, Mr. Habib, a 49-year-old Australian citizen born in Egypt, also described psychological abuse that seemed intended to undermine his identity - as a husband, a father and a Muslim man.

Former spy claims Australian government covered up Iraq prisoner abuse

A former Australian spy contradicted government claims that no Australian was involved in interrogating Iraqi prisoners, saying he himself witnessed and reported the alleged abuse of Iraqis by their US captors.
Rod Barton, a former senior analyst for the Defense Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and a long-time Iraq weapons inspector, said he personally interrogated an Iraqi detainee at Camp Cropper, a US center which held so-called "high value" prisoners.
Barton said he raised concerns with an Australian defense official about the abuse of inmates at Camp Cropper before the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib became public, but no action was taken.