Exhilarating... Mamdouh Habib and wife Maha in the cockpit of a training aircraft at Bankstown Airport last week.
Exhilarating... Mamdouh Habib and wife Maha in the cockpit of a training aircraft at Bankstown Airport last week. Photo: Simon Alekna
MAMDOUH HABIB, who was held without charge for more than three years as a suspected terrorist, has taken to the air - and says authorities can do nothing to bring him down.
The former Guantanamo Bay inmate, who has had one training flight in a light plane, said being up in the clouds was the greatest feeling of freedom since his return to Australia four years ago.
He described the 90-minute flight over Sydney's south-west with an instructor as exhilarating.
''Now in the air no one can harass me, not even the police,'' he said. ''Up in the air no one knows me, only the birds, I feel free.''
But the father of four from Greenacre says he has not decided whether to start a full-time flight training course to get a pilot's licence.
Mr Habib, who was born in Egypt in 1956, is on medical benefits after the failure of his Sydney security and cleaning business.
He said the public and authorities had nothing to fear if he gained his pilot's licence because: ''I am not and never have been a terrorist.''
''If someone wanted to commit a terrorist act with a plane, why would they get a licence? They would not get a licence to fly a plane,'' he said at Bankstown Airport.
Mr Habib said his wife Maha had gone with him to the flying school when he took his first lesson last month.
He said he had worn a T-shirt that declared ''ASIO Traded Me'', in reference to his long court action against the Federal Government for compensation for wrongful detention and alleged kidnapping by US authorities in Pakistan when he visited that country.
Mr Habib said he had decided to learn to fly because of frustration over an eight-month delay by the Department of Immigration and Foreign Affairs to issue him with an Australian passport which would allow him to travel abroad with his family or visit his sick sister in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city.
He produced letters from the passport office saying his application could not be considered because the office was ''awaiting advice from ASIO about whether the circumstances providing grounds for the decision to refuse to issue you a travel document remain current''.
He found the refusal to let him travel abroad was absurd as he could still fly domestically and take flying lessons without a security clearance.
Mr Habib said if he did not obtain his licence, he was considering learning to become an aircraft maintenance engineer.
''I have done nothing wrong. No one can stop me.''