months and questioned before being transferred to US military custody and imprisoned in Afghanistan. A Pentagon spokesman said at the time that Habib was a terrorist who had spent his time across the border in Afghanistan, "either supporting hostile forces, or on the battlefield fighting illegally against the U.S." following its entry in the fall of 2001. Australian government authorities alleged that while Habib had been in Afghanistan, he took an advanced al-Qaeda training course in a camp near Kabul. It claimed that the course included surveillance and photographing facilities, the establishment and use of safe houses, covert travel and writing secret reports. Australian authorities say that several other men who took part in the course identified Habib as having been there. Evidence to support these claims was not made public. The CIA sent Habib back to Egypt by extraordinary rendition, where he claims he was held and interrogated under torture for five months. He claims his Egyptian captors allegedly shocked him with high-voltage wires, hung him from metal hooks on walls, and beat him. In 2005 an Egyptian official said that he could not comment on these specific allegations, but added that accusations that the Egyptian government was torturing people "tend to be mythology". The claims have been substantiated by other witnesses and Moazzam Begg, a British citizen and former detainee at Guantanamo who founded Cageprisoners, an organization representing detainees. "They outsource torture," said Stephen Hopper, Habib's Australian lawyer, referring to the practices of the United States. "You get your friends and allies to do your dirty work for you." Habib has said that some of his interrogators in Pakistan had recognizable American accents, and that one had a tattoo of an American flag on his arm. In 2002, the US transported Habib from Egypt to Guantanamo Bay, where he was detained for two years. During detention, Habib confessed to a litany of terrorism-related crimes, including teaching martial arts to several of the September 11 hijackers and planning a hijacking. After release, in 2005 Habib insisted that his confessions were false and given under "duress and torture." Mamdouh Ibrahim Ahmed Habib v. George Bush A writ of habeas corpus, Mamdouh Ibrahim Ahmed Habib v. George Bush, was submitted on Mamdouh Ibrahim Ahmed Habib's behalf. In response, on 1 October 2004, the Department of Defense released 63 pages of unclassified documents related to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. On 20