Convict says US official threatened to assault wife
SYDNEY, July 4: An Australian convicted of receiving funds from Al Qaeda told his trial that an American official threatened to have his wife raped if he did not cooperate, according to court documents released on Tuesday.
Joseph Thomas, known as “Jihad Jack,” also told his trial he was threatened with torture by the unnamed American official and Pakistani agents during five months in custody in Pakistan.
Thomas, 32, was found guilty earlier this year of receiving 3,500 US dollars and an airline ticket from Osama bin Laden’s terror network and is serving a five-year jail term.
During his trial, he testified in closed court because of security concerns. But on Tuesday the Victorian Supreme Court released a transcript of his evidence.
Thomas, who was detained by Pakistani authorities in January 2003 after training with the Taliban in Afghanistan, told the court that an American officer threatened that his wife would be raped.
According to the transcript, he believed the man was a CIA agent. “That’s just what he was saying, especially about my wife and sending agents to Australia to rape my wife, because ‘oh your wife will be getting lonely’,” Thomas told the court in November.
The officer also allegedly threatened to send him back to Afghanistan where the latest technique to extract information was “twisting testicles,” Thomas said.
He also threatened “he’d put my wife’s breasts ... in a vice,” Thomas told the court, according to the transcript seen by the Australian Associated Press.
Thomas told the court that Pakistani authorities threatened to execute and electrocute him if he did not tell them the truth.
He said that on a number of occasions Pakistani officers told him “we’re outside the law” and “no one can hear you scream.”
