From the New York Times

Ex-Captive in Guantánamo Makes Run for Office in Australia
Tony Sernack for The New York Times

Mamdouh Habib with his wife, Maha, in Auburn, Australia, a multiracial town in New South Wales where he seeks a state parliament seat.
By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: March 21, 2007

AUBURN, Australia — Mamdouh Habib cannot drink cold water. He vomits when he tries to, he said. He knows he must drink water, so he engages in vigorous exercise in order to force some lukewarm water down.

He says his doctor has told him his stomach has been damaged. Mr. Habib thinks it is from having gas forced into it through some kind of tubes inserted into his rectum when he was detained and, he says, tortured in Egypt.

“It made you feel like you were flying,” he said.

Mr. Habib, an unemployed 51-year-old father of four, was an early case of rendition. He was seized in Pakistan in October 2001, where he has alleged that he was tortured, then bound up by tough English-speaking men in black and secretly flown to Egypt, where he was held and, by his accounts, tortured for several months, before being shipped to the American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in April 2002.

He was released from Guantánamo and returned to Australia in February 2005 without any charges filed against him, because the Bush administration did not want the torture allegations aired in court, Australian and American officials have said.

Now, he is fighting back. He is running in elections on March 24 for a seat in the parliament of the state of New South Wales, whose capital is Sydney.

If the fear has been that those released from Guantánamo would return home more radicalized from their experience, Mr. Habib, for his part, has decided to join the establishment, it seems, as a nonestablishment candidate.

“We have to be inside the parliament to know what’s going on, and to let the people on the outside know what is going on, and that is why we are doing this,” said Raul Bassi, a native of Argentina, who recruited Mr. Habib to run.

The Habibs; Mr. Bassi, a 60-year-old atheist, human rights and antiwar campaigner; and others from Mr. Habib’s somewhat ragtag electoral network gathered on a Saturday morning for coffee at Michel’s, on the busy corner of Auburn Road and Queen Street. The coalition includes the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party.

“I’m from this community,” Mr. Habib said, taking another cigarette. “The people in parliament are not from us — they’re rich people.”

Looking nothing like a traditional candidate, Mr. Habib, his hair in a ponytail, was wearing aviator sunglasses, combat fatigues and a T-shirt with an upside down American flag on it, along with a picture of a hooded prisoner behind barbed wire, and the word “terrorism” defined as “the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal.”

The multiracial nature of the Auburn district is visible everywhere, in the people walking the streets — women in full chador, Chinese, lanky Ethiopians and Somalis — and in the shops they go into. Within a 100 yards of Michel’s there is the Turkish Gözde Cafe; Ali Baba’s Charcoal Chicken; Al Safra Pizza and Kebab House.

From the poorest ABC

Minchin attacks NSW public servants' pay figures

The Federal Government has entered the New South Wales election campaign, arguing over pay for public servants in the state.

Federal Finance minister Nick Minchin says public servants' pay has grown by almost 50 per cent in New South Wales since 1997, more than any other state.

He says the NSW Government is fiscally reckless.

"Now it's clear that the deficit is because of the extraordinary largesse with their own employees," he said.

The NSW Minister for Industrial Relations, John Della Bosca, says the State Government is not ashamed of the figures.

"The Iemma Government makes no bones about our police, teachers, fire brigades and other public servants being paid the best in Australia," he said.

Mr Della Bosca also says Senator Minchin is a South Australian who should keep out of New South Wales politics.

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Gus: One thing is for sure, should Opus Dei Debnam be elected as the leader of NSW, he would wipe out the job of 20,000 to 40,000 public servants and... of course he would have to replace the lot with a giganormous amount of "consultants" to to the same job, which they would not and could not, at triple the cost... So Mr Minchin should go and play with himself somewhere away from the NSW bear pit...

And Mr Minchin, have you seen the real cost of a mansion on Sydney Harbour? totally unaffordable... except for a non-lodger Primus rattus...