A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

 

• Wikileaks shows inept US trying to change Iran
• Wikileaks: Not all leaks are created equal
• Egyptian torture victim: Suleiman “should be arrested”
• Wael Ghonim talks to CNN and dispels some myths over Egypt
• The Serco rot jumps to yet another country
• Republicans find new ways to make love to Zionism
• Exclusive: Mamdouh Habib interview on new US/Israeli Egyptian pet Omar Suleiman
• What a US/Israeli backed state looks like
• Australia has no idea how to handle a few thousand refugees
• Obama unsure whether to support Egyptian democracy or ball crushers

Wikileaks shows inept US trying to change Iran Posted: 10 Feb 2011 04:01 PM PST Memo to Washington: your credibility over Iran would be massively higher if you told client state Israel to stop claiming Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the second coming of Hitler: WikiLeaks has worked its magic again, illuminating US efforts to promote change in Iran – and explaining recent goings-on at Durham University. Its proposals for exchanges with Iranian media, academic, civil society and clerical sectors are set out in a “confidential” cable from the US embassy in London in April 2008. Ideas include conferences on NGOs and women, with Persian transcripts to be disseminated via podcasts or videoclips posted on YouTube or in VOA Persian TV broadcasts. It would offer “US and USG [US government] observers a useful look inside Iranian politics at a grassroots level”. The embassy was impressed by the “political cover” among contacts within Iran that Durham was apparently able to generate, even allowing it to invite an academic and cleric associated with the Revolutionary Guard. And there was praise for an “innovative and arguably groundbreaking proposal” (needing £57,000 in funding) for workshops for students from seminaries in Qom and Mashhad with US and UK academics, to emphasise themes of human rights, democracy, accountability and rule of law.

Wikileaks: Not all leaks are created equalPosted: 10 Feb 2011 01:59 PM PST My following essay appears today in Online Opinion: The Obama administration is pursuing Wikileaks and its Australian founder Julian Assange for alleged criminal activity in releasing classified documents. The US Department of Justice has ordered Twitter to hand over private messages sent by parties close to Wikileaks and the whistle-blower website says that even the more than 600,000 followers of its tweets may be investigated. Barack Obama is more vigorously chasing leakers than the Bush administration. In early January a former CIA officer was charged with disclosing national security secrets about Iran to a New York Times journalist. But Washington’s outrage is highly selective. Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced details of his memoir this year and acknowledged that never-before-seen governments, sourced without using traditional freedom of information methods, would be included. Nobody has called for Rumsfeld to be prosecuted and nobody will. The legal wrangling over Wikileaks will continue for years but the relationship between journalists and governments and reporters and the general public is being transformed in ways that has been rarely examined. Here’s why it matters so much. The traditional form of investigative journalism has involved reporters digging around for material on business, government or individuals and then distilling this information into a readable and important story. Sources are discovered and maintained. Unsuspecting leaks (as well as sanctioned ones) may occur that shed invaluable light. But through it all, readers would rarely see the background to the news-gathering. All they saw was the final product and assess its worth accordingly. This unhealthy secrecy is one of the key reasons Assange speaks about scientific journalism, the right of consumers to dig deeper into a yarn. As he wrote in the Australian in December: “Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?” Despite the mainstream media’s reluctance to reveal its journalistic engine-room, corporate media has been central to launching Wikileaks into the stratosphere. Reporters from a carefully selected number of newspapers and television outlets dissected the cables and only released the angles they thought were important. Wikileaks was not in charge of this process and thus far little more than 3000 out of 250,000 cables have been published. Judicious care has been shown by both Wikileaks and the media to avoid any potential harm to civilians, a concern perhaps not fully appreciated by Assange with the Iraq and Afghan war logs in 2010. But where does this leave investigative journalism itself? Middle East correspondent for the Independent Robert Fisk toldAl-Jazeera English in late 2010 that the cables made for fascinating reading but risked making the media lazy. Would they simply wait at their computers for the next intriguing cable to drop into their laps? Still nothing beats being on the road and witnessing events in person. Contributing editor at the Financial Times John Lloyd worries that the sheer volume of Wikileaks documents “reduces investigative journalists to bit players whose job is to redact the output and provide context.” Perhaps, but journalists should not forget that the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning, didn’t send his treasure trove of documents to the mainstream media but picked a website with a track-record of judiciously disclosing secrets. Manning’s exact motives are impossible to currently determine but he allegedly told convicted hacker Adrian Lamo in 2010 that the cables contained “almost criminal political back dealings” and had to be exposed to the public. Media players may have to start getting used to a new form of release; hackers often view complete information transparency as the best way forward. A former collaborator with Assange, Melbourne-based Suelette Dreyfus, wrote in December that the Wikileaks founder had always wanted to “improve the lot of the most oppressed” by “using information which can be replicated endlessly – and cheaply – to promote change for the better.” As the internet continues to develop, serious journalists have no choice but to appreciate and understand how online communities disseminate information. There are now endless numbers of players willing to share news and a reporter’s job will be to find it and understand its significance. The days of the traditional news drop from a political advisor may be coming to a close; this unhealthy embedding serves nobody except the power and media elites. Indeed, Wikileaks provided invaluable background to the current turmoil in Egypt and across the Arab world. US diplomats wrote back to Washington that there were concerned with Egyptian bloggers being detained and tortured but the billions of dollars of military aid continued nonetheless. The main concern for the US remains Israel, a message heard loud and clear on the streets of Cairo. With a majority of Australians according to polls supporting the Wikileaks cable release, politicians and journalists should listen to the wise words of Britain’s independent freedom of information watchdog, Christopher Graham. He recently argued that the relationship between the state and its public has fundamentally changed: “From the point of view of public scrutiny, the web and the internet has empowered citizens. Governments now need to factor in that things can be Wikileaked…You can’t un-invent Wikileaks. If all of us accept that this is the people’s information and 99.9% should be out there in all its tedium, you wouldn’t have a Wikileaks.” Attacking Wikileaks for releasing information or claiming the group has revealed nothing new is a predictable tactic of insiders who fear a challenge to the status-quo of cosiness between powerful interests and the media. We should all celebrate its downfall.

Egyptian torture victim: Suleiman “should be arrested”Posted: 10 Feb 2011 01:52 PM PST The following statement was just released by America’s Institute for Public Accuracy: Former Ambassador, CIA Official Weigh In On Wednesday, the Institute for Public Accuracy distributed a news release titled “Omar Suleiman, ‘Egypt’s Torturer-in-Chief,’ Tied to False Iraq WMD Tortured ‘Intel.’” Reporter Robert Tait writes in the Guardian on his abduction in Cairo just this week. The Guardian reports Tait could “only listen as fellow captives were electrocuted and beaten by Mubarak’s security services.” Writes Tait: “I had ‘disappeared,’ along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak’s vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an ‘orderly transition’ to democratic rule. Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope.” ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author in Sydney, Australia. He just interviewed Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian who wrote the book “My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t.” Loewenstein’s web pagefeatures audio of a new interview with Habib in which he says of Suleiman: “He should be arrested, he should be in jail, he’s a criminal. … If America supports Suleiman, people in Egypt will say Obama is a criminal.” Loewenstein’s webpage also features selected excerpts from Habib’s 2008 book in which he recounts how Suleiman personally threatened his life and tortured him and how he was offered money to state that he was planning a terror attack. Twitter feed: twitter.com/antloewenstein  Amb. EDWARD L. PECK  Peck served in Tunisia and Egypt, was chief of mission in Iraq and Mauritania, and deputy director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan White House. He said today: “As America understandably dithers over the important question of what, if anything, it can, could, should or might be able to do in advancing its interests in Egypt and the broader Middle East, there is one critical point that must not be ignored: The long-quiescent population has had far more than enough of quasi-dictatorial rule. “They have gone to very considerable lengths to make this point absolutely clear to anyone and everyone. The government nominally headed by Mubarak has been completely and indelibly rejected. To offer as his replacement, however temporarily, one of his most reprehensible subordinates is certainly not going to satisfy the demonstrators. They can perhaps be coerced into silence but not surrender, and the eventual day of reckoning will  probably not be as relatively restrained as what we are seeing now. “In order to have any hope of salvaging even a shred of any remaining status with Egyptians, and many others, we must pull back from appearing to consider ourselves as having a legitimate role and a significant responsibility in determining their country’s future. At an absolute minimum, we should abandon all indications that we consider Suleiman to be worthy of consideration as a successor. He, too, must go.” RAY McGOVERN McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He said today: “Relatively little attention has been paid to the major factor in play with respect to the crisis in Egypt. That factor involves the stakes for Israel, which stands to lose what has become an ally in Egypt, and might have to revert to worrying about security in additional border areas and in Gaza, not to mention elsewhere in the Arab world. “Egypt can be expected to do all it can to keep Suleiman or another official from the old regime in power. And, for that to happen, strong U.S. support will be indispensable. Israeli pressure on Washington probably accounts largely for the vagaries in Washington’s recent statements and positions. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak just met with Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates in Washington to coordinate the Israeli-U.S. response. If the Obama administration continues to keep itself joined at the hip with Israel, both countries stand eventually to lose out in Egypt and in other Arab countries — and lose big time.” The Telegraph reports, based on WikiLeaks documents: “The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a long-standing favourite of Israel’s who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv government via a secret ‘hotline’ to Cairo, leaked documents disclose.” LISA HAJJAR Hajjar is a professor in the sociology department at the University of California-Santa Barbara and a co-editor at the new journal Jadaliyya, where she recently wrote the piece “Omar Suleiman, the CIA’s Man in Cairo and Egypt’s Torturer-in-Chief.” She was featured on IPA’s Wednesday release For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Wael Ghonim talks to CNN and dispels some myths over EgyptPosted: 10 Feb 2011 06:55 AM PST He explains the major role of the internet in the uprisings, the non-existent place of the Muslim Brotherhood in the beginning and how the time to negotiate with the regime is over (when innocents are being tortured and murdered in the streets):

The Serco rot jumps to yet another countryPosted: 10 Feb 2011 06:32 AM PST The following statement was released on 9th February by the New Zealand Green Party: It has been revealed that a Serco prison has the worst record of self-harm in Scotland, said the Green Party today. Serco’s contract to run Auckland remand prison is due to be tabled in Parliament shortly. It has been reported in the UK: “that Kilmarnock Prison, run by private operator Serco, has the highest recorded incidence of self-harm in Scotland with 280 incidents since 2004, more than three times as many as the next highest men’s prison, HMP Aberdeen, which saw 91 incidents.” “These revelations are more evidence that New Zealanders need to be concerned about prison corporations setting up here,” said Green Party Corrections Spokesperson David Clendon. “I am deeply worried about the implications for public safety and the humane treatment of prisoners if John Key’s Government continues down the path of privatising our prison system,” said Mr Clendon. An inquest released last month found that unlawful force contributed to the death of a 14 year old in Serco custody. The young man was subjected to a controversial restraining technique shortly before he committed suicide. Overseas media reports have linked Serco with violence, lack of adequate health care, and overcrowding.There is growing evidence from overseas that private prisons do not reduce costs for the governments, and that prisoner safety can sometimes be compromised. “The Government needs to explain how Serco will make a profit without cutting into the conditions of staff or compromising safety and rehabilitation. “As we heard in his speech yesterday, John Key is committed to privatisation even though only overseas corporations will benefit. “The community and public sectors have many good innovative ideas about how the prison system can be improved and the cycle of recidivism broken. “The Government can listen to them rather than reneging on their responsibilities by flogging off prison management to corporations”, said Mr Clendon.

Republicans find new ways to make love to ZionismPosted: 10 Feb 2011 06:28 AM PST Just who is in charge of American politics? Don’t tell me that Zionist lobby money has nothing to do with any of this: Aspiring politicians in New York once made a point of visiting the three I’s: Italy, Ireland and Israel. For the GOP’s presidential prospects in 2012, it’s all about one: Israel. A stop in the Jewish state is becoming as critical to a would-be president’s political resume as an early trip to Iowa or New Hampshire, a sort of global two-fer. Get some early foreign policy street-cred and play a little dog-whistle politics with Christian conservatives who are deeply invested in Israel’s fate – some because they view it as critical to the Biblical vision of the end of days. Not only that, you get to look presidential by having your picture taken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has played host to no less than three Republican contenders in recent weeks. Particularly for governors – who always face the question of whether they’re ready for the foreign policy part of the job — you can’t buy an ad that good. “It’s not the Ames straw poll, but I do think a visit to Israel is an important stop for folks who are running for president,” said Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matthew Brooks. “You have a lot of governors and former governors running – folks who have not necessarily had a chance to immerse themselves in these issues,” Brooks said. “So much of what our commander-in-chief will deal with in the White House is rooted in this part of the world.” There are currently two Republican presidential prospects in Israel: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Barbour, who’s visiting on a trip organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition, will meet with Netanyahu and speak at a policy conference on Wednesday. Huckabee met with Netanyahu last week as part of an even more extended visit. They arrived not long after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney departed Israel as part of a weeklong foreign trip that also took him to Afghanistan last month. He, too, got face time with Netanyahu, whom he worked with decades ago at Boston Consulting Group.

Exclusive: Mamdouh Habib interview on new US/Israeli Egyptian pet Omar SuleimanPosted: 10 Feb 2011 05:05 AM PST Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured and tortured in the years after September 11 in both Egypt and Guantanamo Bay. For years, “war on terror” supporters defamed Habib and claimed he was lying about his allegations of mistreatment. However last year in just one case against the Australian Murdoch press, he won a small victory: The courts have delivered another win to former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib, declaring that he was defamed by News Ltd columnist Piers Akerman, paving the way for a hefty payout. The New South Wales Court of Appeal overturned a 2008 judgment in favour of Mr Akerman’s publisher Nationwide News and yesterday ordered them to pay Mr Habib’s legal costs in the five-year-old battle. It was the second win for Mr Habib in a month after the full court of the Federal Court upheld an appeal in his mammoth compensation case against the federal government for allegedly aiding and abetting his torture by foreign agents.  Another hearing will now be held to determine what damages he will receive for the 2005 article in The Daily Telegraph and other News Ltd newspapers, headlined ”Mr Habib, it’s time to tell the full story”. Today, with the Egyptian uprisings in full swing, the man tapped by the US, Israel and the West to lead the country, Omar Suleiman, was one of Habib’s torturers and there is intense scrutiny of who this man truly is. I interviewed Habib exclusively tonight in Sydney about Suleiman, his calls for the torturer-in-chief to be charged, his knowledge about all the figures complicit in his rendition and his support for the Egyptian protests. He stressed that Suleiman was a CIA/Mossad agent who was willing to do anything for a price: mamdouhhabib1100211 (part 1) mamdouhhabib2110211 (part 2) I reviewed Habib’s book, My Story, in 2008 for the Sydney Morning Herald and it tells a powerful story. The extracts below are all the references to Suleiman: pp.112-115 The guard quickly told me that the very big boss was coming to talk to me, and that I must be well behaved and co-operate. Everyone was nervous. I have since found out that the boss was Omar Suleiman, head of all Egyptian security. He was known for personally supervising the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and sending reports to the CIA. In the beginning, he was often present during my interrogations. He must have thought that he had a big fish when I was sent to him by the Americans and Australians. I was sitting in a chair, hooded, with my hands handcuffed behind my back. He came up to me. His voice was deep and rough. He spoke to me in Egyptian and English. He said, “Listen, you don’t know who I am, but I am the one who has your life in his hands. Every single person in this building has his life in my hands. I just make the decision.” I said, “I hope your decision is that you make me die straight away.” “No, I don’t want you to die now. I want you to die slowly.” He went on, “I can’t stay with you; my time is too valuable to stay here. You only have me to save you. I’m your saviour. You have to tell me everything, if you want to be saved. What do you say?” “I have nothing to tell you.” “You think I can’t destroy you just like that?” He clapped his hands together. “I don’t know”. I was feeling confused. Everything was unreal. “If God came down and tried to take you by the hand, I would not let him. You are under my control. Let me show you something that will convince you.” The guard then guided me out of the room and through an area where I could see, from below the blindfold, the trunks of palm trees. We then went through another door back inside, and descended some steps. We entered a room. They sat me down. “Now you are going to tell me that you planned a terrorist attack”, Suleiman persisted. “I haven’t planned any attacks.” “I give you my word that you will be a rich man if you tell me you have been planning attacks. Don’t you trust me?” he asked. “I don’t trust anyone”, I replied. Immediately he slapped me hard across the face and knocked off the blindfold; I clearly saw his face. “That’s it. That’s it. I don’t want to see this man again until he co-operates and tells me he’s been planning a terrorist attack! he yelled at the others in the room, then stormed out. The guard came up to me, upset that I hadn’t co-operated. I said to him, “You have to let me go soon; it’s nearly 48 hours.” He looked at me, surprised, and asked, “How long do you think you’ve been here?” “A day”, I replied. “Man, you’ve been here for more than a week.” They then took me to another room, where they tortured me relentlessly, stripping me naked and applying electric shocks everywhere on my body. The next thing I remember was seeing the general again. He came into the room with a man from Turkistan; he was a big man but was stooped over, because his hands were chained to the shackles of his feet, preventing him from standing upright. “This guy is no use to us anymore. This is what is going to happen to you. We’ve had him for one hour, and this is what happens.” Suddenly, a guy they called Hamish, which means snake, came at the poor man from behind and gave him a terrible karate kick that sent him crashing across the room. A guard went over to shake him, but he didn’t respond. Turning to the general, the guard said, “Basha, I think he’s dead.” “Throw him away then. Let the dogs have him.” They dragged the dead man out. “What do you think of that?” asked the general, staring into my face. “At least he can rest now”, I replied. Then they brought another man in. This man, I think, was from Europe – his exclamations of pain didn’t sound like those of someone from the Middle East. He was in a terrible state. The guard came in with a machine and started to wire up the guy to it. They told the poor man that they were going to give him a full electric shock, measuring ten on the scale. Before they even turned the machine on, the man started to gasp and then slumped in the chair. I think he died of a heart attack. The general said that there was one more person I had to see. “This person will make you see that we can keep you here for as long as we want, all of your life, if we choose.” There was a window in the room, covered by a curtain. The general drew back a curtain, and I saw the top half of a very sick, thin man. He was sitting on a chair on the other side of the glass, facing me. “You know this guy?” the general asked. “No”, I replied. “That’s strange – he’s your friend from Australia.” I looked again, and was horrified to see that it was Mohammed Abbas, a man I had known in Australia who had worked for Telstra [Australian telecommunications company]. He had travelled to Egypt in 1999, and had never been seen again. “He is going to be your neighbour for the rest of your life.” It was then that I knew I was in Egypt, without a doubt. They then took Abbas away and closed the curtain. p.118 After the first interrogation with Suleiman, I believed the Egyptians weren’t interested in where I had been; they only wanted me to confess to being a terrorist and having plotted terrorist attacks so they could sell the information to the United States and Australia. I decided then that I wouldn’t answer questions or explain anything; but, as a consequence, I was badly tortured in Egypt. p.133 The Egyptians didn’t like Maha [Habib’s wife] at all. One day, I overheard Omar Suleiman saying to someone, “I would love to bring Maha here.” I have no idea when this was but the memory of these few words is very vivid in my mind. Fortunately, though, Suleiman could never have gotten hold of Maha, because she is Lebanese born and an Australian citizen. Suleiman, before my release from Egypt, often threatened that he would get me back if I ever said anything bad about Egypt. After years of slamming Habib’s claims of torture, the Australian government has recently implicitly acknowledged the validity of his allegations: Last December 17 in Sydney, officers representing the federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland signed a secret deal with former terror suspect Mamdouh Habib. It featured an undisclosed compensation payout in return for Habib dropping his long-running civil suit claiming commonwealth complicity in his 2001 arrest, rendition, detention and torture in Pakistan, Egypt and Guantanamo Bay. The secrecy clause preventing details of the deal being made public prolonged a decade-long cover-up of exactly what the Australian government and its officers knew about Habib’s CIA rendition to Egypt, where he was held in barbarous conditions and tortured for seven months, before being transferred to Cuba. Since Habib returned to Australia in January 2005, successive governments and the security agencies have denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, this ugly episode. The commonwealth has used every legal device at its disposal to keep the sordid details under wraps, routinely frustrating media and legal efforts to get to the truth, in the name of national security. In 2007 a judge in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal lashed out at ASIO’s repeated refusal to release information on Habib, asking: “Why should we take your word for it when again and again we find things that are said to be the subject of national security concerns turn out not to be? I mean it looks like an easy way out for ASIO: when in doubt, just say ‘national security’.” The hush-hush settlement seemed set to stamp the Habib case closed for good. But with the ink on it hardly dry, startling claims have emerged about Australia’s connivance in the brutal maltreatment of one of its citizens. The new testimony is in the form of witness statements obtained by Habib and tendered to commonwealth lawyers – but not until now made public – which apparently precipitated the December deal. These accounts have not been tested in court but, if true, they provide damning evidence of Australia’s collusion, and expose as lies the repeated insistence that Australia had no knowledge of or involvement in Habib’s ordeal. A decade after the event, it is now possible to piece together the sorry story of Australia’s treatment of Habib, based on court testimony, witness statements, government documents released from court files and under freedom of information, and insider accounts. It is a disturbing tale. Habib was arrested in Pakistan days after the September 11 attacks on the US. He has always maintained he was there to look at relocating his family, while Australian investigators claim he had been in an al-Qa’ida training camp, which Habib still denies. Either way, he was of keen interest to the authorities, particularly the CIA, because of his acquaintance with the militants who carried out the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. Australian officials visited Habib, along with FBI and CIA agents, three times while he was detained in Islamabad in late October 2001. A few days later he was handed over to the Americans, handcuffed, shackled, hooded, with his mouth and eyes taped and a bag over his head, and flown to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, before being transferred to Egypt. For the next seven months there he was subjected to relentless interrogation, beatings, electric shocks, water torture, sexual assault, cigarette burns and more. For years, the Australian authorities denied any knowledge of Habib’s detention in Egypt. It was only in 2008 that the Australian Federal Police revealed that his pending transfer had been raised by US officials in Pakistan before the event, and then discussed in Canberra among officers from the AFP, ASIO, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the attorney-general’s and prime minister’s departments, who “agreed that the Australian government could not agree to the transfer of Mr Habib to Egypt”, evidence to the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee in May 2008 shows. “Plausible deniability” was thus achieved, while Habib’s transfer went ahead anyway. US terrorism investigators have said it is inconceivable the rendition would have proceeded without Australia knowing, and intelligence insiders say those involved in Habib’s case were in no doubt as to where he was being sent. Habib has always maintained Australian officials were present during his transfer to, and detention in, Cairo. For their part, the government and security agencies have steadfastly denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, his time in Egypt, even insisting they were never sure he was there at all. Both ASIO and the DFAT have stated they had no contact with Habib in Egypt. But the untested witness statements obtained for Habib’s civil suit, and now reported exclusively in The Weekend Australian, tell a different story. One statement, by a former Egyptian military intelligence officer who worked at the Cairo prison where terror suspects were held, says Australian officials were present when Habib arrived and throughout his detention. “During Habib’s presence some of the Australian officials attended many times . . . The same official who attended the first time used to come with them,” the statement says. “Habib was tortured a lot and all the time, as the foreign intelligence wanted quick and fast information.” The officer, whose name does not appear in the translation of his statement seen by The Weekend Australian, said he was prepared to testify in court, if he was given protection. Another statement was obtained from a fellow detainee of Habib’s in Egypt and later Guantanamo Bay, Pakistani-Saudi national Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni. Madni was captured by the CIA in Jakarta in January 2002 and rendered to Egypt and later Guantanamo Bay, accused of being a member of al-Qa’ida. He was finally released in August 2009 and reunited with his family in Lahore, Pakistan. Madni describes spending three months in a 6 by 8 foot (1.8m by 2.4m) underground cell, and being tortured by similar methods to those described by Habib. He recounts, “I could hear Mamdouh Habib screaming in pain during his interrogation”, and recalls being told by prison staff that the Australian was very sick and possibly dying. Madni also claims Australian officials were there. “Egyptian, Australian, Israeli (Mossad) and US intelligence agencies were involved in my interrogations . . . The Egyptian interrogator told me that the Australian intelligence organisation wanted to ask me questions about Mamdouh Habib . . . An officer . . . asked me questions like ‘How did you know or where did you meet Mamdouh Habib?”‘ These disturbing allegations will presumably be central to a fresh inquiry ordered this week by the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, the watchdog that oversees our intelligence and security agencies. Julia Gillard requested the inquiry, apparently after the settlement was reached, and after Habib wrote to the Prime Minister telling her he had witnesses who could confirm the presence of Australian officials in Egypt. The Prime Minister’s office confirms Gillard has asked the Inspector-General to inquire into “the actions of relevant Australian agencies” in relation to Habib’s arrest and detention overseas. A spokesperson tells Focus: “A number of serious allegations have been made in relation to this matter and it is appropriate for the Prime Minister to request that they be properly examined. The IGIS Act requires inquiries to be conducted in private.” But the spokesperson did not say if the results will be released. Furthermore, Canberra has now launched an investigation into Habib’s allegations that Australian officials were present during his interrogations in Egypt in Cairo in 2001 when Suleiman was abusing Habib. Habib is a key witness able to reliably confirm the real role Suleiman plays in today’s Egypt. Barack Obama and his Western allies should strongly condemn the abuses in Mubarak’s Egypt and demand accountability for the crimes committed in his name. As Habib told me tonight, it is impossible for Suleiman, with his bloody record, to lead Egypt into a better future. With the latest reports indicating that Suleiman and Mubarak are ramping up torture against protesters (here and here), Habib’s voice and experience should be heard loud and clear. UPDATE: Cross-posted on Mondoweiss.

What a US/Israeli backed state looks likePosted: 09 Feb 2011 11:36 PM PST Egypt, February 2011. Robert Tait writes in the Guardian: The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor. A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: “In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don’t behave – electrocution and rape.” Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure. I had “disappeared”, along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak‘s vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an “orderly transition” to democratic rule. Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope. I had often wondered, reading accounts of political prisoners detained and tortured in places such as junta-run Argentina of the 1970s, what it would be like to be totally at the mercy of, and dependent on, your jailer for everything – food, water, the toilet. I never dreamed I would find out. Yet here I was, cooped up in a tiny room with a group of Egyptian detainees who were being mercilessly brutalised. I had been handed over to the security services after being stopped at a police checkpoint near central Cairo last Friday. I had flown there, along with an Iraqi-born British colleague, Abdelilah Nuaimi, to cover Egypt‘s unfolding crisis for RFE/RL, an American radio station based in Prague.

Australia has no idea how to handle a few thousand refugeesPosted: 09 Feb 2011 11:20 PM PST We are led by cowards and fools, governments and oppositions afraid to treat asylum seekers as human beings. Instead of processing the relatively few people quickly and carefully, they are housed away in privatised prisons run by a British multinational, Serco, with no accountability. This feature in today’s Melbourne Age shows the disgrace: Today over 6000 asylum seekers are held in Australia’s overcrowded detention facilities – close to a postwar record. They wait in places such as Curtin, Darwin and Christmas Island to have their claims for refugee status assessed, reassessed and, where necessary, appealed through the courts. It is a process that can take several years because of the huge backlog of cases created by the Rudd Government’s bungled six-month moratorium on refugee processing. ”We could easily end up with 10,000 in detention because people-smuggling pipelines through Indonesia are so well established they cannot be closed,” a well-placed federal government source told The Age. ”Canberra is the second-biggest jailer in the land and the cost is blowing budgets out of the water. The present position is unsustainable.” The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimates that it costs up to $150,000 a year to house a detainee (or close to $1 billion annually for all detainees) and that figure does not include numerous ancillary costs. ”We are rapidly approaching a situation where we not only have nowhere to put people, but it is prohibitively expensive to go on locking people up while their claims for asylum are tested.” … So who are those in detention? Some employees of Serco, the private company running the detention centres, provided the following sketchy profile. Among the Afghans, they say, are significant numbers of young men of Hazara ethnicity from remote rural areas where they often worked on the land tending herds and crops. Some may be related to Afghans already living in Australia and go to great lengths to avoid being identified.

Obama unsure whether to support Egyptian democracy or ball crushersPosted: 09 Feb 2011 09:50 PM PST Thankfully the Los Angeles Times doesn’t mince words when writing about Washington’s response to the Egyptian uprising: The Obama administration’s shifting response to the crisis in Egypt reflects a sharp debate over how and when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should leave office, a policy decision that could have long-term implications for America’s image in the Middle East. After sending mixed signals, the administration has appeared to settle on supporting a measured transition for easing Mubarak out of power. That strategy, which remains the subject of vigorous debate inside the administration, calls for a Mubarak crony, Vice President Omar Suleiman, to lead the reform process. According to experts who have interacted with the White House, the tactic is favored by a group of foreign policy advisors including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, national security advisor Thomas Donilon and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who worry about regional stability and want to reassure other Middle East governments that the U.S. will not abandon an important and longtime ally. But that position has been harder to defend as Suleiman and other Mubarak allies appeared to dig in, refusing the administration’s entreaties to undertake swift reforms such as scrapping the country’s longstanding state of emergency. On Wednesday, Suleiman warned ominously of a coup unless the unrest ended. That prompted White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to fire back that the Egyptians should “expand the size and scope of the discussions and the negotiations and to take many of the steps that we outlined yesterday — one of which is lifting the emergency law.” Suleiman’s behavior reinforced the arguments of another camp inside the Obama administration, including National Security Council members Ben Rhodes and Samantha Power, which contends that if President Obama appears to side with the remnants of Mubarak’s discredited regime, he risks being seen as complicit in stifling a pro-democracy movement.