12 July 2004	Monday	23 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

WASHINGTON, July 11: An Australian terrorism suspect deported from Pakistan to Egypt for interrogation was tortured, reports said. Mamdouh Habib was flown to Egypt from Pakistan where he was arrested as a terror suspect.

Habib is now held at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, along with another Australian, David Hicks. Reports published in some US newspapers over the weekend quoted Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat as saying that the US government had asked Pakistan to send Habib to Egypt for interrogation.

A former Qatari justice minister also told SBS TV that Habib was tortured and interrogated in Egypt to the point where he'd admit to anything. Lawyer Steve Watts with the Center for Constitutional Right in New York told reporters that the United States routinely engages in a policy known as rendition, which he describes as state-sponsored abduction.

He said the process allows US authorities to remove people like Habib to countries, such as Egypt, where the use of torture as an interrogation technique is allegedly commonplace. US officials deny the existence of such a policy, saying they have never wilfully allowed a prisoner to be tortured.