By Natalie O'Brien
QUESTIONS on whether senior Howard government officials misled Parliament about their knowledge of the torture of the Australian Mamdouh Habib will be asked when Parliament resumes this month.
Greens senator Scott Ludlam told The Sun-Herald he would raise the issue in budget estimates and ask if the government wanted to ''clarify what it has previously put on the record'' in light of the WikiLeaks revelations last week backing Mr Habib's complaint that he was tortured in Egypt.
Guantanamo Bay detainee, Mamdouh Habib, and his wife, Maha.Credit: Janie Barrett JEM
Senator Ludlam said he was concerned that, since the secret US documents had been made public, there had been no formal response from the government.
''The most important point now is to set a precedent to ensure this cannot happen again.''
The US files, which include a dossier on Mr Habib and his fellow Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks, confirm Mr Habib's interrogation in Egypt under ''extreme duress''.
Mr Habib said the documents proved the government knew that he had been taken to Egypt and tortured after he was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 after September 11.
Mr Habib received a secret payment late last year in exchange for dropping a lawsuit against the government.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard asked the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to investigate the role Australian security agencies played in Mr Habib's arrest overseas and rendition to Egypt.
Among those to question the government's denials that it knew Mr Habib had been taken to Egypt is Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official who set up the so-called rendition program, who has said it was unlikely Australia would not have been informed.
Mr Habib was taken to Egypt for six months, then in May 2002 sent to Guantanamo Bay, where Australian Federal Police and ASIO officers interviewed him.
But on February 14, 2005, the then AFP commissioner, Mick Keelty, told a Senate estimates hearing that he did not know if Mr Habib had ever been in Egypt.
The then head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, now the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, was asked the next day what he knew about the US practice of sending prisoners to other countries such as Egypt for interrogation. He said: ''We have no information as of fact about that.''
In 2007 the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee decided against a hearing on inconsistencies of evidence given to Parliament.
The Senate privileges committee cleared Mr Keelty and the then secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, Robert Cornall, of giving false or misleading evidence, but they were criticised for not being more frank and for the AFP's tardiness in answering questions on notice.
It was not until early 2008 that Mr Keelty admitted one of his officers had discussed Mr Habib's ''rendition'' with US officials.
Within months Mr Richardson's successor, Paul O'Sullivan, admitted the US government had spoken to Mr Richardson about wanting to have Mr Habib sent to Egypt.