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Australia Fights Damages Claim By Former GuantanamoBay Detainee
Associated Press
August 3, 2006
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The Australian government might have to track down thousands of documents, many of them classified, from around the world to defend a damages lawsuit brought by a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, a court was told Thursday.
Mamdouh Habib, a 50-year-old Egyptian-born Australian citizen, alleges Australian officials were complicit in his arrest in Pakistan in October 2001 and failed to help when he complained of being tortured in Pakistan and later in Egypt.
He was arrested by Pakistani police three weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and accused of training with al-Qaida.
Habib alleges he was tortured in Islamabad by unnamed agents before being flown to Egypt where he was tortured by Egyptian officials.
From Egypt, he was sent to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and held without charge for three years until his release in January 2005 when he was flown home to his family in Sydney.
Government lawyer Andrew Berger told a preliminary hearing in the Federal Court in Canberra that Habib's case was "very complex" and that addressing some claims would require finding "huge numbers of documents scattered throughout the world."
But Judge Rodney Madgwick told Berger such problems should not stand in the way of a fair trial.
"The interests of justice and the interests of national security can be reconciled," Madgwick said.
The government has asked the court to reject claims made by Habib before they get to trial.
The case was adjourned until the next preliminary hearing in November.
The only other Australian held at GuantanamoBay is David Hicks, a 31-year-old alleged Taliban fighter who was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001.
He has pleaded innocent to charges of terrorist conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy.
The center-right government, a staunch ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, has never asked Washington to repatriate either man.
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