http://www.theage.com.au/news/War-on-Te ... click=true

No apology, no money: Howard
January 12, 2005 - 12:59PM

Australia will not apologise to nor compensate Sydney man Mamdouh Habib, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Mr Habib is to be released after spending more than three years in a US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But Mr Howard said he had also told the United States "in very plain terms" that the process took too long.

US authorities have decided not to charge Mr Habib, who was captured in Pakistan in October 2001 on suspicion he had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks in the US and had trained with al-Qaeda.

The father of four is expected to be flown home within days and is unlikely to face further charges because Australian terror laws are not retrospective.

Mr Howard said Australia would not apologise.

"We don't have any apology to offer," Mr Howard told reporters. "We won't be offering compensation."

Mr Habib's lawyer Stephen Hopper described the imprisonment as the most disgraceful episode in Australian history.
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Mr Hopper vowed to bring to justice those responsible for Mr Habib's detention and torture of the "most hideous, vile and medieval kind", indicating the family might seek compensation from Australia and the US.

Maha Habib, Mr Habib's wife, called the government a "disgrace".

"To apologise or not, is not going to make any difference. The glass has been broken, they have breached our human rights and they are the criminals," she told reporters.

While the federal government was advised Mr Habib was lawfully detained at Guantanamo Bay, it had told US authorities Mr Habib should either be charged or repatriated, Mr Howard said.

"I think the process took too long and we have made that known in very plain terms to the United States," he said.

"I haven't questioned the right of the Americans, given the circumstances, to apprehend him but we have argued all along that they have had to either charge him or let him go."

Details of Mr Habib's return were still being discussed.

Mr Howard said when Mr Habib did return, he would be subject to Australian law, but not to anti-terror laws introduced after the alleged activities which led to his arrest.

"He will remain a security interest. I don't intend to elaborate on that," he said.

Mr Habib's release would not affect the case of the other Australian held at Guantanamo Bay, Adelaide man David Hicks, who is due to stand trial in March.

- AAP
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They had nothing on Habib... and by the sound of it... they have nothing on Hicks either.

this is a disgrace... makes me utterly sick.

It took us 100s of years to get to the point where we had due process. One terrorist attack and its all gone.

3 years of hell. No charges brought.

Disgraceful.

Here's an article my IHL lecturer wrote about Hicks a few months back:

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Hicks in the system thanks to a wilful oversight
November 3, 2004


The Government is cravenly wrong to insist that David Hicks cannot be tried in Australia, writes Devika Hovell.

David Hicks would rank very low on the agenda of either candidate in the United States election. This is in spite of the fact that the military commissions before which his trial is due to commence on January 11 are controlled by the US Government.

Like the young woman recently detained by the Indonesian Government for alleged drug-smuggling, Hicks relies on the Australian Government to defend his interests when he is being tried by a foreign power.

The Government has consistently claimed that there is no basis upon which Hicks can be tried here. Asked in September whether Hicks could be returned to Australia, the Prime Minister, John Howard, responded, "That is an unrealistic proposition. If [Hicks] is brought back to Australia, [he goes] free because there is no crime under Australian law with which [he] can be charged."

This is incorrect. Hicks has been brought before the commission on three charges: conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy.

Military Commission Instruction No.2, which sets out the elements of these crimes, states that all "crimes and elements derive from the law of armed conflict, a body of law that is sometimes referred to as the law of war".

The laws of war are essentially found in the four Geneva Conventions and two Additional Protocols. Far from being separate from Australian law, these conventions have formed a part of it since 1957, when they were incorporated into domestic law by the Geneva Conventions Act.

This act vested jurisdiction in state supreme courts to hear offences against the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I. Even the conspiracy to commit terrorism, forming part of the first count with which Hicks is charged, falls under this act. One of the elements of the offence of terrorism in Military Instruction No. 2 is that the act of terrorism "was associated with armed conflict".

Terrorist acts committed as part of an armed conflict are covered by the Geneva Conventions, and therefore Australian law.

The fact that the Government has consistently denied the possibility of trying David Hicks before an Australian court is a remarkable error. As a result, three years after he was first detained at Guantanamo Bay, Hicks, an Australian national, stands charged before a US military commission in Cuba.

The first report of the independent observer for the Law Council of Australia found that "as a matter of fundamental principle of criminal justice, these proceedings are [and will continue to be] flawed and that a fair trial of David Hicks in the military commission is virtually impossible".

It is an error that other like-minded countries have not made. Pressure from the British Government has led to the release of five Britons detained at Guantanamo Bay without cause. Britain also continues to push for the return of its four remaining nationals, whose legal position is less clear.

The British Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, has said the military commissions "as presently constituted would not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals".

The perception of the secondary justice meted out by the military commissions is brought into stark relief by the fact that even the Americans have seen fit to exempt their nationals from the process. The only American detainee, John Walker Lindh, was tried before a United States District Court in Virginia. His trial began in January 2002, within a few months of his capture.

At the relevant time, offences with which Hicks has been charged formed part of Australian law. There is no need to enact new legislation to enable his prosecution by Australian courts. At best, the Government's failure to recognise this demonstrates a disturbing lack of knowledge or initiative to provide its citizen with the protections of the Australian legal system.

At worst, it shows a willingness on the part of the Government to sacrifice the fundamental rights of a national to a reluctance to offend the US Administration. There must be a limit to the extent to which the Government is prepared to support the actions of the US and accommodate its will.

Australia's relationship with the US is undoubtedly important in this essentially unipolar world. However, the balance arguably tilts too far when a government's desire for the ear of the prince renders it deaf to the cries of its citizens.

Devika Hovell is director of the International Law Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, University of NSW.

It's a fucking disgrace. I've been sitting here watching Ruddock on the 7:30 Report trying to defend it and I was so pissed off that my mother asked me (tongue in cheek) why I was breathing funny.
They didn't have enough evidence to charge him, so imo, he should never have been detained for three years.

I dont think Howard knows how to say sorry.

Well, that much is for damn sure.

Habib may not have been an enemy of the US and Oz before, but now it seems more likely that he will be.

*sigh*

Bingo.

And he lives about 30 min drive from my house

This man was locked up in an Egyptian cell and tortured for months on end. They didn't even catch him in armed conflict... he was on a bus in Pakistan for Christ's sake. (or something along those lines... might have been a train)

Really?

What was all this I was hearing about the "they aren't just nabbing people at random" stuff?