ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 8 (UPI) -- An Australian terrorism suspect taken to Egypt for interrogation was tortured, reports said.
Mamdouh Habib was flown to Egypt from Pakistan where he was arrested as a terror suspect. Habib is now held at the U.S. prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba along with another Australian, David Hicks.
In an interview to Australia's SBS TV, Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, said the U.S. government had asked Pakistan to send Habib to Egypt for interrogation.
A former Qatari justice minister also told SBS TV Habib was tortured and interrogated in Egypt to the point where he'd admit to anything.
Lawyer Steve Watts with the Centre for Constitutional Right in New York told SBS TV that the United States routinely engages in a policy known as rendition, which he describes as state-sponsored abduction.
He said the process allows U.S. authorities to remove people like Habib to countries, such as Egypt, where the use of torture as an interrogation technique is allegedly commonplace.
U.S. officials deny the existence of such a policy, saying they have never willfully allowed a prisoner to be tortured.
