Commentariat: Janet Albrechtsen knows best

Albrechtsen asserts that neither Habib nor Hicks was entitled to the protection of the rule of law or the benefit of Western values, on two grounds: first, that both Habib and Hicks were terrorists; and second, that neither is a very nice person.

Albrechtsen initially broached the topic of the detention of Hicks and Habib in a column in The Australian in early 2002. (“Soldiers of Terror Don’t have Rights”, February 13) From this first column, through to her most recent discussion of Hicks’s return to Australia three weeks ago, Albrechtsen has pronounced that neither Hicks nor Habib was entitled to judgment by their peers in a court of law, and that the presumption of innocence had no role to play in their fate.

By some power superior to that of a court of law, Albrechtsen was able to discern what the “facts” of the matter were in both cases, long before any charges had even been laid.

In 2003, Senator Bob Brown protested the prisoners’ detainment to President George W. Bush. Albrechtsen, in her column in The Australian (“Brown Blind to Immoral Reality”, October 29, 2003), promptly retorted: “No, Senator, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are precisely where the facts show they belong” - that is, in indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay.

In the same piece, Albrechtsen went on to make various allegations about Hicks’s record, adding, “According to intelligence sources, as bad as Hicks’s record looks, Habib’s is worse”. The evidence? According to Albrechtsen, “a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has told The Australian that Habib was in fact training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan before September 11”. Albrechtsen concluded Habib and Hicks “are illegal combatants and have been treated as such” - handily delivering her verdict before any examination of evidence in a legal proceeding.

In defence of Albrechtsen’s powers of legal prescience, Hicks did plead himself out of Guantánamo Bay by making a stipulation of fact as to his role in al-Qaida (although the circumstances surrounding that “confession” are notorious and do little to restore the reputation of Bush or Howard or any of their apparatchiks).

Habib, however, has made no such admissions. He was released (in Albrechtsen’s phrase, on to “the streets” of Sydney) without charge or trial. By her account, Habib was never entitled to the presumption of innocence, and he remains disentitled to it.

In an opinion piece published in The Australian in 2005, just after Habib was released from Guantánamo Bay (“Ex-prisoner Is Hardly a Hero”, February 9), Albrechtsen asserted that “Defending the rule of law and the rights of citizens is a noble cause, but Habib is a dubious choice as aggrieved victim”. All those insisting on Habib’s innocence, she maintained, were simply in the grip of unworldliness. For example, Albrechtsen’s response to American-born Marty Morrison’s characterisation of Habib as “a wonderful man” was that “She does not know Habib. Not really.” Albrechtsen in contrast really knows Habib, and recited the evidence she has marshalled against him:

Six trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan between March 1998 and July 2001, surely not all for checking out schools; admissions that he raised funds for the Egyptian-born cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre; allegations that Habib told friends he met Osama bin Laden and undertook advanced training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; allegations of a phone call to his wife days before the September 11 attacks, warning of a looming “big event” in the US. On it goes. Habib’s supporters say it’s all bunk because his confessions were extracted by torture. Yet there are other witnesses who put Habib in al-Qaeda training camps. We’re talking Terrorism 505, if it is true.

And on it goes, as if it’s true.

As a lawyer, Albrechtsen would know that none of this stew of unattributed allegations, unnamed witnesses, and one too many trips to Pakistan would last five minutes in a court. Seemingly undeterred, Albrechtsen confided to her readers that Habib was released not because he was innocent but because he was so guilty that he could not be safely tried:

Perhaps Habib was released because the US authorities decided that to prosecute him, even in a military tribunal, would mean disclosing vital intelligence sources that may be needed to hunt other terrorists and prevent the next terrorist attack? … And Australia cannot prosecute Habib because the anti-terrorism laws were introduced too late to apply to his activities. In other words, someone can benefit from the presumption of innocence but still be dangerous.