Prisoner compares Guantanamo to Stallone film
An Australian terror suspect being held at Guantanamo Bay has likened his detention to a Hollywood movie that depicts life in a brutal prison.
During a 30-minute phone call with his wife, Mamdouh Habib compared his treatment at the US base in Cuba to the 1989 Sylvester Stallone film Lock Up, lawyer Stephen Hopper said in Sydney.
Hopper said the prisoner’s wife Maha Habib had mixed feelings after the call.
“She’s very happy that’s she’s spoken to her husband finally after nearly three years,” he said.
“She’s very upset about how she believes he’s being treated and certainly he’s not the same Mamdouh that she last spoke to. He’s morbidly depressed and at some stages during the conversation he was breaking down in tears.”
Hopper said the phone call, conducted at an Australian government office in Sydney, was monitored throughout and briefly cut off after Habib made the comment about the film, which features mental and physical torture inside a brutal prison.
Hopper said the Egyptian-born Australian citizen was not allowed to speak to his wife in Arabic and banned from discussing his treatment by US authorities.
Habib is one of two Australians held at Guantanamo Bay. He has yet to be charged but is suspected of training with al-Qaida and has been told he likely will be among the next group of prisoners put forward for trail by military commission.
He was arrested in Pakistan shortly before the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Hopper said that during the phone conversation, Habib asked his family not to send him photographs because his captors would use them to psychologically torment him.
Hopper said the phone call should have happened a long time ago.
“It’s something that’s afforded to every prisoner in our jails, every prisoner in all Western jails, but not the people in Guantanamo Bay,” he said.
