Demands grow for release of Australian Guantánamo prisoner, David Hicks : Melbourne Indymedia

Popular opposition continues to mount against the Australian government over its refusal to demand the immediate release of David Hicks from Guantánamo Bay. Hicks was captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance in late December 2001 and then sold to the US military. He has been incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay for more than five years.

Two weeks ago, hundreds demonstrated outside the federal parliament and a national television and radio advertising campaign was launched demanding Hicks’s immediate repatriation.

The growing movement is being animated not only by the almost daily revelations about the sadistic treatment of Guantánamo prisoners, but by deep-seated hostility to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and concerns about the escalating assault on democratic rights at home. Tens of thousands of ordinary Australians now recognise that the soul-destroying incarceration of Hicks is the real face of the so-called “war on terror” and that long-held and hard-won legal principles are under serious threat.

In face of this sentiment, which threatens to unseat the Liberal-National coalition government in federal elections later this year, Prime Minister Howard and other senior government officials have attempted to feign concern about the length of Hicks’s imprisonment. The cynical play-acting has descended to new lows during the past two weeks.

Last November Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock told the local media that he expected terrorism charges to be laid against Hicks before the end of December. When none had been announced by late January, Howard sent a letter to the White House requesting a mid-February deadline.

Howard’s letter, of course, had nothing to do with defending Hicks’s rights, but was in response to the resumption in mid-February of the adjourned federal court action by Hicks’s lawyers over the government’s refusal to demand the Australian citizen’s release.

A week later, when US military prosecutors announced that they were planning to charge Hicks with attempted murder and “providing material aid to terrorists”. Howard immediately declared that Washington was adhering to his “deadline”. Hicks, he said, would be quickly arraigned before a military commission.

These claims, which were primarily directed towards government MPs who were becoming nervous about the approaching federal elections, were rapidly exposed as false.

The so-called charges would not be official until approved by the convening military commissioner, which could take weeks and, according to high-level US officials, even if the charges were approved, Hicks would be unlikely to face trial until next year.

The allegations against Hicks, like the charges against him which lapsed following last year’s US Supreme Court rulings, are a legal travesty and would be thrown out in any civil court hearing. War combatants cannot be prosecuted for murder under the Geneva Conventions and “providing material aid to terrorists” is a retrospective charge, based on legislation introduced last year.

Likewise, the military commissions, as countless human rights organisations and legal experts have pointed out, are kangaroo courts designed to secure guilty verdicts and little different from those ruled illegal last year. In fact, the revamped commissions still allow hearsay evidence and evidence

extracted using coercive methods, as well as allowing those on trial to be excluded from the proceedings at any time.

Defence lawyers for Yemini citizen Salim Hamdan (31) and Canadian Omar Khadr (19)—the two Guantánamo prisoners to be charged with Hicks—have pointed out that the new commissions are illegal and deeply anti-democratic.

Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, who represents Hamdan, told Associated Press that he has not yet been able to interview any of the 70 government agents who made statements that will be used against his client. And under commission rules, it is unlikely he will be allowed to cross-examine them in any commission hearing.

Likewise, defence lawyer Marine Lieutentant Colonel Colby Vokey said he was not able to meet with his client, Omar Khadr, during his last visit to Guantánamo because the deeply-traumatised prisoner refused to leave his cell. Khadr, who is one of the youngest prisoners in Guantánamo, was incarcerated in October 2002, when he was only 15 years old, and has spent almost a quarter of his life in the American-run hellhole.

Howard, Attorney-General Ruddock and other senior ministers, however, maintain that the commissions will provide a fair trial. These claims are combined with increasingly desperate maneouvres and self-contradictory lies about the government’s involvement in Hicks’s ongoing incarceration.

Damning admissions

For the past five years Canberra has insisted that Hicks could not be freed because Washington wants Guantánamo prisoners punished. This assertion is exposed by the US release of more than 300 detainees from Guantánamo, including senior Taliban officials, over the past three years.

Canberra has also insisted that Hicks could not be repatriated because he was charged with terrorism in 2004 and that those who were freed—Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib and British prisoners—were not charged or designated as eligible for trial.

These claims are also false. In fact, the British detainees and Habib had been named for trial. Moreover, US authorities decided to release Habib in early 2005 because they feared his trial would expose the Bush administration’s illegal kidnapping or rendition program.

But such is the mountain of lies from Canberra that government officials are losing track. On Monday, February 5, the government’s threadbare claims were suddenly cast aside when Howard told a meeting of government MPs that all he had to do was ask for Hicks’s release and the Australian would be repatriated.

This admission was repeated the next day by Attorney-General Ruddock and then Robert McCallum, the US ambassador to Australia.

McCallum told Brisbane’s Courier Mail that Australia had a “special relationship” with the US and that US President Bush would seriously consider any request for Hicks’s release.

Howard and Ruddock made clear, however, that they would not ask for Hicks’s release because he had not committed any crime under Australian law and therefore would have to be released. In other words, Hicks is innocent and, in the Kafkaesque world of the Howard government, must be further punished by the Americans because Canberra cannot legally punish him!

When local journalists asked Attorney-General Ruddock why he opposed retrospectivity in Australia yet supported Hicks being charged under retrospective laws in the US, he falsely claimed that the American charges were “not retrospective”.

Ruddock’s comments confirm what millions of people in Australia and around the world already know—that Hicks’s more than five-year imprisonment and physical and psychological abuse is the direct responsibility of Howard and other senior government ministers. They have conspired with Washington to violate the Geneva Conventions and international law and their actions constitute war crimes.

Ruddock and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also continue to insist that Hicks is in “good health”—assertions that are strenuously denied by Hicks, his family and his defence lawyers—and that there is no evidence that he or anyone else has ever been tortured or brutalised in Guantánamo. Downer arrogantly declared last week that he “hadn’t heard that they’ve [the US] breached the Geneva Conventions” over the treatment of Guantánamo prisoners!

Ruddock even repeated his claims that sleep deprivation of prisoners in Guantánamo was “not torture”. “[M]y wife always cites the example of young parents,” he told ABC radio. “You know, you don’t say it’s coercive or torture. You simply say ... we were kept awake and it’s a bit unreasonable”.

Asked to comment on reports that Hicks was deeply disoriented, Ruddock sadistically declared: “People respond to detention in different ways ... Some people don’t handle it well.”

Hicks denounces Australian government
Notwithstanding these cruel and desperate claims, the brutal reality of everyday life in Guantánamo was further exposed when Hicks’s defence lawyers—Major Michael Mori and David McLeod—visited the Australian prisoner in early February.

When McLeod compared Guantánamo to a “Nazi concentration camp” and revealed that Hicks was chained to the floor during the meetings, an official attached to the Australian embassy in Washington suddenly arrived at the prison. He was given a tour of Camp Six and Hicks’s cell and then demanded an interview with the Australian.

Hicks, who has refused to meet with any Australian official in the past six months, immediately rejected the official’s requests. He then wrote a courageous and defiant letter outlining his reasons.

It read in part: “In the past I have been punished for speaking to you. I am not well, I am not OK and yet you have not done anything for me and the Australian government keeps saying I’m fine and in an acceptable situation.

“To speak with you and tell you the truth and the reality of my situation would only risk further punishments. You are not here for me but on behalf of the Australian Government who are leaving me here. If you want to do something for me then get me out of here.”

The next day Hicks’s lawyers revealed that Guantánamo prisoners had been taunted with photos and a poster depicting the execution of Saddam Hussein. The poster had a caption stating that Hussein had to be executed because he had lied. US military authorities claimed that the material was for the “intellectual stimulation” of prisoners.

On return to Australia, David McLeod held a press conference denouncing Guantánamo as a “lawless prison run by the CIA and US interrogators” who used subjugation and degradation torture techniques. He angrily denounced the decision by US authorities to wait until defence lawyers had left Guantánamo before informing his client that he was going to be charged. This, McLeod said, was “an act of bastardry” which would have a “devastating” impact on the 31-year-old father of two, who was in “a spiral of despair”.

The Australian defence lawyer also revealed that US military authorities attempted to intimidate him for speaking out about prison conditions. “I was subjected to a rather aggressive interrogation by one of the officials there for talking to the media in the way that I have,” he said. “This is the standard approach. This is what happens when a lawless place like Guantánamo Bay is subject to scrutiny.”

McLeod’s comments about the prison were chillingly confirmed a few days later by Guantánamo chief, Rear Admiral Harry Harris. Trampling on any presumption of innocence and other basic legal rights, he told ABC radio’s “PM”, that Hicks was a “dangerous terrorist” and had to be kept in his cell 22 hours a day for security reasons.

There were “no innocent detainees” in Guantánamo, Harris continued, only “enemy combatants” whom the US had the right to incarcerate indefinitely.

See Also:
In the face of mounting opposition, Australian government backs new Guantánamo courts
[26 January 2007]
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/hick-j26.shtml
David Hicks enters his sixth year of detention at Guantánamo Bay
[8 January 2007]
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/dhic-j08.shtml
Australian lawyers launch court bid to secure David Hicks's release from Guantánamo
[15 December 2006]
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/hick-d15.shtml
Australian rallies demand release of David Hicks from Guantánamo Bay
[12 December 2006]
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/hick-d12.shtml

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/hick-f19.shtml

David McLoad the honking Australian lawyer remind me of the legal eagle from the film "The Castle", except (unlike the film solicitor) he do NOT realise he is a failure.

Just take his talk about the concept of innocence, like he imagine the terrorists are there for a bunch of parking fines or similar.

Maybe he should have tried the same absurd stance back in Melbourne when Julian Knight had his day. Most Australians realise that Muhammad Dawood (former David Hicks) is a much worse choice for their daughters "blind-date" then even such street killers, even martin Bryant.

If the people that for mysterious reason think they can further their flagging careers by siding with dangerous terrorists had a GENOINE RESPECT they would at least call him by his preferred name Muhammad Dawood.

But not so, they always use his DISCARDED name "David Hicks". This is the point, David Hicks does not exist any more.

People like Dick Smith handing over great sums of money to bloodthirsty terrorists like Muhammad Dawood should ask themselves if they really have a clue what they are doing. This man is so crazy that he even reject his father and his family that incredibly still try to help him.

The Hicks family have never had it so good and the bonanza will come to a brutal end once Muhammad Dawood has returned after serving his sentence.

Reality is that no Australian Government will have Muhammad Dawood (Please note: at least I show the dangerous man some respect he would appreciate!) walking the streets before the convicted “American Taliban” that serve a 20 year sentence after a plea-bargaining.

I’m convinced that Muhammd Dawood is a much harder nut to crack. If Hicks Senior was honest he would admit this and let us know were all the money comes from.

Dicks Smith: $60,000.00
Sultan so and so: 1000.000.00
Egyptian Brotherhood: $150,000.00
Indonesian Ismaliah: $30,000.00
The Hause of Sauid: $10,000,000.00

Reality is that except for Dick Smith’s $60,000.00 I really have no idea but I would dearly like to know the truth. It is hard to imagine that a plump Lawyer like David McLoad would be so passionate about anything except a big pot of gold. AND, it the gold is there!

You're not Australian that is the only reason you could post this stupid comment in the first place. Go back to Isra-hell where you come from idiot!

We'd do better if terrorists like you took David's place.

For a start the man hasn't been charged or tried for 5 years.

That tells you that by him being tried fairly that would expose all the John Howard government lies about him.

In short John Howard should rot in hell and be taken to ICC and tried as a war criminal and holocaust denier. He'd even get a fairer trial than David Hicks.

David Hicks was just in the wrong place at the right time to be kidnapped and tortured and made a scapegoat for the illegal and degrading war of aggression on Iraq and Afghanistan killing over 655,000 people.

Get your facts right.

THE PIC U POSTED IS A FAKE ... IT IS AN "IDENTIKIT" COMPOSITE TO PORTRAY HICKS IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT ...you fuckin genius!!!

check ur sources before posting the man's CRAP

lol 'safe-here' isnt even trying to be plausible anymore.... mad as a hatter. Might as well say 'blahblahblah', particularly given your audience at this site.

Dick Smith giving millions to terrorists? All this fuss over a name change? Man, this is just silly. From the perspective of many here Hicks hasn't done anything wrong...

nothing wrong with fighting and killing yanks, for a start. Especially when you're doing it in a country they've invaded.

No foul, as our beseiged American cousins might say.

Meanwhile, David Hicks has finally gotten around to laying charges against the alleged terrorist United States.... see link for details...

sry meant this link..

Just the point then init?

You don't know what he looks like now and neither do we because no one accept the US has been able to take a picture of him!

What does that tell you?

Every picture tells a story!

So don't give up your day job!

an identikit is NOT a picture that is taken, CLOWN -- it is manufactured!! Its called a fabrication is u want to be specific.

the world is full of geniuses and they all seem to have found MIM, today ... for fuck's sake!

A US appeals court has upheld an anti-terrorism provision that prevents inmates at Guantanamo Bay, including Australian man David Hicks, challenging their detentions in American civilian courts.

The provision is a key element of a law passed by Congress last year after the Supreme Court put a stop to the old military commission system.

By a 2-1 vote, in a major victory for the Bush administration, the US Court of Appeals ruled the law that Congress passed last year took away the rights of the prisoners at the US military base in Cuba to bring such cases and that hundreds of their lawsuits must be dismissed.

"Federal courts have no jurisdiction in these cases," Judge A Raymond Randolph concluded for the court majority in his 25-page opinion issued by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they planned to appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court, which has previously handed setbacks to the Bush administration over handling of its war on terrorism.

There currently are about 395 detainees at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, including Osama bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan, who has challenged the law.

The first prisoners arrived more than five years ago following the September 11 attacks, and the base has been a central and controversial part of Mr Bush's war on terrorism.

The indefinite and incontestable nature of the Guantanamo prisoners' detention and allegations of prisoner mistreatment, which the US military denies, have tarnished the United States' image abroad, and a growing chorus of allies have urged the United States to shut down the camp.

Lawyers for two groups of prisoners - including about 40 detainees still at Guantanamo such as Hicks and six Algerians captured in Bosnia - argued before the court the new law did not apply to their clients.

They said it violated the US Constitution's clause that prevents the suspension of habeas corpus rights except in times of rebellion or invasion.

Those longstanding rights allow someone being being held to challenge their detention.

The appeals court, however, rejected both positions and said the law explicitly said it applied to all cases without exception.

"It is almost as if the proponents of these words were slamming their firsts on the table shouting 'When we say 'all', we mean all - without exception!" the court majority said.

Hicks's military lawyer Major Michael Mori says the latest court ruling could mean more delays for his client because the decision is likely to be the subject of an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

"It could potentially, it depends on what the Supreme Court does, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether or not to take the case and we won't know that for several months and so it could it could be an interruption several months from now," he said.

Habeas corpus
The court also said there was no legal precedent suggesting habeas corpus applies to aliens held outside the United States.

Judge Judith Rogers, an appointee of former president Bill Clinton, disagreed and said habeas corpus rights can be suspended only in rare cases.

"However, Congress has not invoked this power," she said.

After the US Supreme Court struck down the military tribunal system that Mr Bush initially created to try Guantanamo prisoners, he went to the Republican-controlled Congress and got authority under the law signed in October that allows tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects.

Now that Democrats are in control in Congress, some law-makers are seeking to adopt legislation that would restore the rights of the prisoners to bring lawsuits in US court.

Lawyers for the prisoners said the ruling was not the final word. They urged Congress to restore the rights of the prisoners and vowed to appeal to the US Supreme Court.

In Boston, lawyer Stephen Oleskey, who represents six Algerians held at Guantanamo, said his clients would appeal to the Supreme Court.

"I don't believe this is the final word on these matters. I think the final word will be spoken by the Supreme Court and by Congress," he said.

Shayana Kadidal of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents hundreds of prisoners, said the decision "empowers the president to do whatever he wishes to prisoners without any legal limitation as long as he does it off shore."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1852661.htm

============================

Why not just make crime legal and no crime illegal?