Former detainee Habib runs for NSW Parliament
February 01, 2007 12:19pm

FORMER Guantanomo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib will stand as an independent candidate in next month's New South Wales state election.

Mr Habib will be supported by the Auburn Human Rights Group (AHRG), in the seat of Auburn.

Mr Habib said he would be campaigning for "the right of freedom of expression and in opposition to the anti-terrorist laws, state and federal".

"The right to fight racism, the end of scapegoating of Aborigines, Muslims and migrants," Mr Habib said.

"The right to oppose Australia's involvement in Iraq."

He said he was also standing on education, housing, health and environment issues.

AHRG member and campaign manager Raul Bassi said the group would support Mr Habib because the traditional parties were offering nothing new.

"All they have to offer is more privatisation, less money for people's needs and lots of empty promises with hidden agendas," Mr Bassi said.

"The aim of the campaign is to reclaim our diminishing human rights, negated every day by the state and federal governments, and to organise people who are prepared to fight for them."

Mr Habib was held in Guantanamo Bay without charge for three years before being released in January 2005.

He was arrested in Pakistan one month after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and accused of training with al-Qaeda.

He alleges he was tortured in Islamabad and again in Egypt before being transferred to Cuba.

Labor MP Barbara Perry holds Auburn by a comfortable 26.5 per cent.

Labor and the Liberals have both ruled out doing preference deals with Mr Habib in Auburn.

"Mr Habib is preaching the politics of division - something the ALP will always fight," a Labor Party spokesman said.

"He will not get our preferences, nor would we want him to preference us."

NSW Liberal director Graham Jaeschke said his party had no intention of preferencing Mr Habib nor any candidates backed by controversial Sheik Taj al-Ddin al-Hilali.

The Labor spokesman called on Opposition Leader Peter Debnam to reveal what links Tom Zreika, a Liberal Party member and president of the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), had to Mr Habib's candidature.

Mr Jaeschke said Mr Zreika had made it clear the LMA would not back political candidates.

News Limited

Ex-Guantanamo inmate contests Australian vote

Sydney - An ex-terror suspect who was jailed for more than three years in the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison will be among the candidates when Australia's most populous state goes to the polls on Saturday.

Mamdouh Habib is regarded as a rank outsider for the seat he is contesting in suburban Sydney but said he hoped to send a message to the state of New South Wales, home to seven million of Australia's 20 million population.

Launching his campaign last month, Habib said he represented "the right of freedom of expression, opposition to the anti-terrorist laws ... the right to fight racism, the end of scapegoating of Aborigines, Muslims and migrants."

Habib also listed "the right to oppose Australia's involvement in Iraq" as a motivating factor behind his election tilt.

The 51-year-old father of four was detained in Pakistan in late 2001 on suspicion of terrorist links and eventually jailed at Guanatanamo after first being handed over to authorities in Egypt.

He alleged that he was tortured while being held in Egypt and forced to make a false confession.

He was released without charge by US authorities in January 2005 and has insisted since his return that he was not a terrorist and had no ties to Al-Qaeda.

He is trying to win a set for Auburn, in Sydney's western suburbs -- an area that is home to Australia's largest mosque and a significant portion of the country's 300,000 Muslims.

Agence France Presse

I am not sure on electoral laws but how on earth can a terror suspect be permitted to run for parliament?