Right to privacy experts say that it was unfair to target a former driver of Osama Bin Ladin as a security threat.
While he was in Afghanistan, searching for appropriate schools to send his children as Australian ones were deemed unsuitable. While he was in Afghanistan, and collecting social security because he wasn't working in Australia. Mr Habib has declared he wants to live in Australia.
Mr Habib has also written that he hates Australia so much he wants to live in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Libya under Gaddafi, before Gaddafi gave up terrorism.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Contract Cleaner Wrote For Help
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Habib wrote to Saddam, Gaddafi
By Kara Lawrence and Kim Arlington
FORMER Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib wrote to two of the world's most despised dictators seeking asylum in Iraq and Libya, and denouncing Australia as full of "infidels".
The letters to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were released for the first time as part of a defamation hearing in the NSW Supreme Court, in which Habib is suing Nationwide News.
The letter to Iraq's leader was dated April 2001, just months before Mr Habib was detained as a terror suspect in Pakistan, Egypt and Guantanamo Bay.
The letter to Colonel Gaddafi was believed to have been sent around the same time as the other letter, and months before his arrest in Pakistan in late 2001.
They express disgust with Australian values and seek financial help to relocate to and live in either country.
The since-executed Iraqi leader is addressed as "brother and leader" and Colonel Gaddafi as "brother and revolutionary", and Mr Habib pledges: "We love you in God".
In the letter, Mr Habib writes he has "been living in the country of infidelity for more than 21 years" and said there were "many Jews".
Mr Habib said he went to a Lashkar-e-Toiba training camp but stayed only one day.
"Stupid. I was just stupid to go there ... because you kill yourself for nothing," Mr Habib said.
While at the training camp, he saw an Australian man he met in Kandahar, Abu Muslim, who he identified in a photograph as David Hicks.
"I don't think he is the type of person to do crime or anything like that," Mr Habib said of Hicks.
He claimed his business - which included cleaning Australian Army barracks - had been put out of business due to the Iraqi war and soldiers' anti-Muslim sentiment.
Egyptian-born Mr Habib went on to cry poor, saying he lost $100,000 due to his business going bust and legal costs.
"Since then, we did not find a single Arabic country to live in and earn our living in accordance with the law of God," he said.
He then asked for money for air tickets and to start a business in his new country.
"My brother, this country advocates homosexuality and the marriage of one man to another ... I pray to God to help me to get out of this place with my family as soon as possible," he wrote.
Mr Habib claims he was tortured while being interrogated in Egypt and Pakistan, including in front of Australian officials.
The case continues.
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