When the sessions began, Mr. Habib said, an American woman, who spoke both Arabic and English, asked the questions: Had he been to Afghanistan? Whom did he know there? He was shown pictures. Did he know these men?
He said he was defiant and told his interrogators: “I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t know who you are.”
He said the American woman told him “this is your last chance,” and that an Australian official said, “I’m sorry for you, Mr. Habib, you’re never going to see your kids anymore.”
Mr. Habib said he was taken to a room with hooks on the wall and a barrel, set sideways like a roller, on the floor. His arms were stretched out, he said, and each wrist was handcuffed and fastened to a hook on the wall. By his description, the only way not to be left hanging was to stand on the barrel; an electric wire ran through it. Mr. Habib said he believed the interrogators in that room were Pakistani.
Mr. Habib said that when he refused to confess to being part of a 1995 terror plot, one man turned on the current. He lifted his feet to avoid the shock, he recalled, and he was suspended from the wall.
“I lost everything,” he said. He doesn’t know how long he was unconscious, but he said that when he came to, he again refused to confess to terrorism. While he was still hanging from the wall, another man, who said he was a martial arts expert, came in and, Mr. Habib said, “starts jump-kicking in my face, jump-kicking in my stomach.”
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