Mamdouh Habib cannot drink cold water. He vomits when he tries to, he says. He says his doctor has told him his stomach has been damaged. Habib thinks it is from having gas forced into it through some kind of tubes inserted into his rectum when he was detained and, he says, tortured in Egypt.Habib, an unemployed 51-year-old father of four, was an early case of rendition. He was seized in Pakistan in October 2001, where he alleges he was tortured, then bound up by tough English-speaking men in black and secretly flown to Egypt, where he was reportedly held and tortured for several months, before being shipped to Guantanamo in April 2002.He was released from Guantanamo and returned to Australia in February 2005, without any charges filed against him. Now, he is fighting back. He is contesting the March 24 elections for a seat in the parliament of the state of New South Wales.“We have to be inside the parliament to know what’s going on, and to let the people on the outside know what is going on,” says Raul Bassi, a native of Argentina, who recruited Habib to run. Looking nothing like a traditional candidate, Habib, his hair in a ponytail, wears aviator sunglasses, combat fatigues and a T-shirt with an upside down American flag on it, along with a picture of a hooded prisoner behind barbed wire, and the word “terrorism” defined as “the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal.”“I’m from this community,” says Habib. “The people in parliament are not from us — they’re rich people.”American and Australian officials have said that Habib went to Pakistan in 2001, and later to Afghanistan where he trained with al-Qaeda. Habib does not deny going to Pakistan. He wanted to find a religious school for his children, he says. Since starting his campaign, he has not been asked by the voters in his district if he trained with al-Qaeda, he says, and if he is, he will answer. But, he says, he is not going to answer that question from a journalist, nor from the government.Habib says he harbors no bitterness toward the American people. He has sisters and cousins living in New York. He even has respect for many of the guards at Guantánamo. They were just doing their job, he says.Habib does not expect to win, but he does plan to keep fighting, his own way. “If we don’t win this election, we’ll go to the next one,” Habib said.
