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FORMER Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has been stabbed near his Sydney home. Mr Habib was walking home with his wife Maha at Guildford in the early hours of yesterday morning when he was bashed on the head from behind and stabbed in the stomach, Channel 7 reported tonight. Mr Habib, who was not seriously injured, believed he had been targeted. Lifting his top to show a 6cm cut over his stomach, Mr Habib said he thought a man had come at him from the front with a knife. "He tried to stab me so many times and he keep...

Australia's top investigators claim Mamdouh Habib trained as a terrorist before the September 11 attacks. Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib trained as a terrorist in Pakistan before moving to Afghanistan to serve as a mercenary with al-Qaeda, Australia's top policeman has told a parliamentary inquiry. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Mr Habib received firearms training in Pakistan in the days before September 11, 2001 to prepare him for a border crossing into Afghanistan to join Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation. Habib was arrested by Pakistani police inside Pakistan on October 5, 2001. "The investigators formed the view...

In his cell in Guantanamo Bay, Mamdouh Habib broke down in tears when he heard his four-year-old daughter, Hajer, talk for the first time. For 30 minutes yesterday, the Sydney man spoke by phone to his wife and four children - the first call he has been allowed to make to them since he was taken into US custody as a suspected terrorist in October 2001. The call confirmed reports from other detainees that "he has been subject to sleep deprivation, beatings and other abuses", according to Mr Habib's Australian lawyer, Stephen Hopper. Mr Habib's wife, Maha, said her husband...

A SYDNEY man allegedly telephoned the suspected leader of al-Qa'ida in Spain – Abu Dahdah – seeking help to move a "brother" and his family throughout Europe. The allegation about former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal – made in documents tendered in Mr Dahdah's terrorism trial – contradicts claims by him that he had never spoken to the alleged terror chief, or even knew who he was. As more details of a network of alleged terror supporters in Australia emerged yesterday, it has been claimed a second Australian named in the Spanish court documents, Melbourne cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran, was...

TO HIS family and friends, Mamdouh Habib was a devoted father and husband. But to others, the calm suburban veneer disguised an angry and often violent man whose actions were fuelled by his religious fanaticism. Seemingly a helpful supporter at his son's soccer matches, Habib also had a nasty streak which landed him with an AVO against former colleagues and a court order to destroy firearms and ammunition in his home. Nine days after the September 11 attack in New York, his home was raided by the nation's chief spy watchdog ASIO. Today, the fate of the man named as...