Habib lawyer lashes out at 'stalling tactics'

as posted here

JOEL GIBSON LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER
September 19, 2009
A FORMER Guantanamo Bay inmate, Mamdouh Habib, has already been seeking redress in the Australian courts for longer than the three years, three months and 23 days he was held without charge as a suspected terrorist.

But any victory in his compensation claim against the Australian Government is likely to be another three years away because of the unprecedented nature of the case and the Government's secrecy and stalling tactics, his lawyer, Peter Erman, said.

In their bid to block Mr Habib's claim for unspecified damages and his attempts to regain his passport, government lawyers have excluded Mr Habib and his legal team from proceedings and challenged the release of documents for national security reasons.

Before a full bench of the Federal Court this week, they argued that Australian courts have no jurisdiction to find foreign government officials tortured Mr Habib in Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and Cuba, and therefore cannot compensate him for the alleged complicity of ASIO, Australian Federal Police and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officers.

The court has not yet had to rule on shocking allegations that Australian officials were involved as he was beaten unconscious, shocked with electric prods, sodomised with sticks, smeared with menstrual blood and threatened with rape by a dog.

Howard government ministers repeatedly denied knowledge of his rendition to Egypt or maltreatment in Guantanamo but the head of ASIO, Paul O'Sullivan, said last year that his predecessor, Dennis Richardson, had been asked for a view on the rendition and said Canberra could not support it.

Mr Erman said even if the Government loses its argument that the Federal Court cannot decide the compensation case, it has indicated the discovery process alone for a full hearing could take at least two years.

Meanwhile, on September 4, Mr Habib won leave to appeal to the High Court over the Government's refusal to reissue his passport.

At an earlier hearing in November 2007, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal upheld the passport cancellation by the minister for foreign affairs and trade and the director-general of security, but Mr Habib and his lawyers are not allowed to see the full judgment and were excluded from the court while ASIO officers gave evidence.

Mr Habib says he is still being watched, and confronted a government lawyer, Andrew Berger, in court this week, saying, ''Tell your spy to leave me alone''.

The mild-mannered Mr Erman said his phones had been tapped and his family followed since he took the case on. ''It's like something out of the Bourne Conspiracy,'' he said, referring to the Robert Ludlum spy novels. But his client and a team of pro bono lawyers working on the case, including barristers Robert Beech-Jones, SC, Ian Barker, QC, and Clive Evatt, were determined to see it through despite the hurdles they had encountered.

Mr Erman said the more people learn about Guantanamo Bay the more they realise it was an overreaction by security forces.

as posted here