Australian Mamdouh Habib tells first-hand how the US ‘War on Terror’ became war on any foreigner in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Australia’s Pontius Pilate Government was complicit, in its knowledge and by its silence, as an Australian was kidnapped, detained, tortured and treated inhumanely to within a millimetre of insanity. Keith McEwan reviews the book. Read more…
My Story: the tale of a terrorist who wasn’t
Mamdouh Habib`s book tells of his descent into hell after being kidnapped, branded a terrorist, imprisoned and tortured in Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Written with the assistance of Julia Collingwood and recently published by Scribe, Melbourne, the book highlights some of the horrors resulting from America`s “War on Terror” following the terrorist attack in New York on 11 September 2001 (“9/11”).
Habib`s story is most distressing as he describes how he, an Egyptian-born Australian Muslim, and many other innocent people were rounded up and sold to American authorities who were wildly seeking revenge after the events on 9/11.
He was taken off a bus in Pakistan in October 2001, a few days before the United States attacked Afghanistan, then held in a web of secret prisons and subjected to unrelenting torture that destroyed the life and minds of many other inmates and almost destroyed Habib himself.
Many of “detainees” were rounded up merely because they looked foreign or were judged guilty by association. Habib describes in harrowing detail how he was heavily drugged, deprived of sleep for weeks, given electric shocks, left naked in freezing-cold rooms in isolation and threatened with rape.
By refusing to name people and confess to crimes he did not commit, Habib received harsh treatment that aimed to strip him of his self-respect, human dignity and personalty. He was told all his family had died and his own life was at an end unless he willingly admitted his association with terrorists. This he steadfastly refused to do, despite long periods of disorientation when he thought he was losing his mind.
Thanks to the efforts of his wife, family members, lawyer Stephen Hopper and many others whom he lists in the book, Habib was released from Guantanamo on 28 January 2005 without charge, after being held in isolation for three and one-half years.
He rightfully condemns the Howard-led Australian government which deliberately ignored his plight and lied about his circumstances as it uncritically sided with the US authorities in their “war” on terror.
Habib has dedicated his book, which took him almost four years to write as he struggled to recover his memory of events: ” For all the men and boys imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and for all those rendered to secret prisons across the world.”
For further reading he has listed seven books :
Begg, Moazzam (2006): “Enemy Combatant: my imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram and Kandahar”, New York: New Press.
Grey, Stephen (2007): “Ghost Plane: the true story of the CIA torture program”, Melbourne: Scribe.
Margulies, Joseph (2007): “Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power”, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Otterman, Michael (2007): “American Torture: from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and beyond”, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Ross, David (2004): Guantanamo: “America`s war on human rights”, London: Faber and Faber.
Smith, Clive Stafford (2007): “Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons”, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Worthington, Andy (2007) “The Guantanamo Files: the stories of the 774 detainees in America`s illegal prison”, London: Pluto Press.
Mamdouh Habib`s book should be read by all Australians, especially those who were unaware of the Australian government`s complicity in his abduction and imprisonment and their abandonment of him while he was being tortured in foreign prisons.
– review by Keith McEwan, CLa member
Paperback, 272pp, ISBN (13): 9781921372391 RRP: $32.95
http://www.scribepublications.com.au/book/mystory