On Monday, the SMH reported that Brigadier Lyn McDade, recently appointed as Australia’s chief military prosecutor, had described the US government’s treatment of David Hicks as “abominable”:
Asked about the treatment of Mr Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years and is not currently charged with any offences, she did not hesitate. “Abominable,” she said. “Quite frankly, I think it’s wrong. I don’t care what he’s done or alleged to have done. I think he’s entitled to a trial and a fair one and he is entitled to be charged and dealt with as quickly as is possible. As is anybody.”
Yesterday a few of the News limited dailies reported that Attorney-General Phil Ruddock believes that the brigadiers’ views agreed with the government’s position:
Mr Ruddock said comments by the director of military prosecutions Brigadier Lyn McDade about the treatment of Hicks echoed the Government’s views. “We believe the delay (in the start of the trial) is very unreasonable and inappropriate,” he said. (The Oz)
According to the News party line, our Rupert’s government is putting pressure on the US to get on with bringing Hicks to trial, now that it seems that the Bush Administration has finally managed to jury-rig a system of show trials that can deliver the required verdict without being overruled on appeal:
Mr Ruddock said his US counterpart, Alberto Gonzales, said the final regulations that would put the US military commission in place were due this month.
“That is expected by the 17th of January and what the US Attorney has said to me is that he expected charges to be laid against Hicks as soon after as possible,” Mr Ruddock said.
“We will continue to monitor their performance in relation to the assurances they have given to us.” (The Hun)
In other words, the Australian government is going to urge the US government to go ahead and do what it’s been planning to do anyway, regardless of whether the Australian government objects. Which, of course, it doesn’t – in five years the Howard government hasn’t wavered in its resolute acquiescence in the US efforts to get Hicks convicted of whatever they can make stick. Preferably an offence for which he will be sentenced to a fair bit more than time already served and definitely no less than that.
Phil Ruddock is an abominable hypocrite. Equally abominable are the efforts of the News limited scribes to spin this latest announcement as a firm stand on principle. The Government remains very floppily supine on this issue.
‘m amazed. This is like the government’s backflip on climate change. “No, seriously, we’ve been nagging them about getting on with the trial THE WHOLE TIME.”
There are really no words, but if there were, abominable WOULD be a good start.
Good to see you’ve jury-rigged a belief that can deliver the required verdict on their system.
There’s no backflip, u-turn or change of policy. A softening of rhetoric maybe, but as Gummo Trotsky observes, its just spin. And after the litany of horrors observed by FBI agents at Guantanamo they need it.
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/guantanamo.htm
It’ll take a hell of a lot more than a few Newscorp columns to make the Military Commissions look anything other than Stalinesque show trials. I personally don’t believe they will ever happen. They haven’t even built the courthouse.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo27dec27,0,5181131.story?coll=la-home-headlines
another job for Halliburton, no doubt.
The intention is to delay, delay, delay. Ruddock can’t have long left in office (or on this planet, thank god). His legacy will be a shameful catalogue of crimes against humanity.
Ruddock and co would argue that there’s no inconsistency with the government’s poaition and that of the Brigadier.
Where they would differ is on the causes of all the delay. If only the defence hadn’t insisted on fairness and transparency they’d have got a trial and conviction long ago. And they couldn’t bring him to Oz without having to release him. QED.
Gummo Trotsky:
My own very wild guess is that Brigadier McDade made her comments after thorough private discussions with her fellow senior officers …. I have yet to be convinced that Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Bush-enthusiast John Howard were party to such private discussions (IF such discussions did happen, of course).
The words “boot-lickers” and “moral cowards” come immediately to mind when speaking about some senior ADF show-ponies in recent decades. However, we have been in an undeclared war for at least five years. Unlike back in the “good old days”; nowadays, responsible senior ADF officers would have assessed and prioritized the risks of offending a few politicians against the risks of this case corroding the morale of their own troops – especially since a small group of politicians has already used the ADF for selfish political advantage whilst ripping off serving ADF members and war veterans and their families.
David Hicks does not sound like a nice bloke …. and a lot of diggers and ex-diggers would probably like to have a word in his shell-like ear about his politics and his overseas adventures …. but no matter what he did or did not do, he certainly did not deserve 5 years of cruel-and-unusual punishments followed by a show trial leading to even more bizarre punishments, all perpetrated by a foreign power.
Whoa back a bit. Has not the Hicks trial been delayed several times by legal challenges to the US Supreme Court from other inmates regarding the legality of the trials?
Anyways, Hicks was on no Cooks Tour when caught. He also applied and was granted British Citizenship. He asked the poms ( it’s okay to say pom still according to the advertising standards recent decision) if they’d pull him out. The British Government appealed to the highest court in the UK and rejected him. So the poms want him as much as we do, not at all. He cannot be prosecuted in Australia for whatever legal reasons the laws dictate. To suggest otherwise is fantasy.
If he has suffered cruel punishment for five years he’d be a better warrior or agent than any of our SAS crack troops. Put simply he’d be a battered pulp or dead by now. If you all want to put your faith in defence lawyers to tell it as it really is you really are misguided.
Where the hell did that key get to???
Dave:
Nobody in their right mind would expect lawyers for a defendent to tell the whole story – Australia’s legal system would collapse in a heap if ever that happened!
As for not being able to be prosecuted for anything at all in Australia. That really is utter nonsense. As you said
Whether any decent judge in Australia would sentence him to a custodial sentence after what he had already endured at the hands of a political clique in a foreign power is a different matter entirely.
Torture does not always conform to Hollywood’s presentation of it so Hicks would not necessarily be beaten to a pulp; anyway, Amnesty International or migrant groups would be able to set you right on that if you wanted to find out what actually happens.
There are some curious associations here with that other weird failure-to-extradite case: Christopher Skase.
There are three aspects to this case that are being ignored in the news media [1] Whether the Commonwealth of Australia is a sovereign nation or is the private estate of a foreign political clique or potentate – it terms of sovereignty, will we end up like the Belgian Congo in the late 19th Century? [2] The legal status of “military contactors” – they’re “our boys” (well, sort of) while we are winning in Iraq – but what are the implications for them of what happens in the Hicks case? [3] Is the Hicks case being used as the thin edge of the wedge to deprive honest, law-abiding Australian citizens of even more liberties, rights. responsibilities and privleges? (And DON’T even think of trying to say “It can’t happen here!!!).
Umm, no Dave and Graham. Hicks broke no Australian laws – as Ruddock himself has admitted. In fact the problems the Yanks have is that he hasn’t broken their laws either, which a proper trial would quickly reveal. He went to fight for the Taliban against its domestic enemies at a time when it was the legal government of Afghanistan. His legal, and indeed moral, position was no different to that of those young Australians enlisted in the IDF. Not even the Ruddocks of this world contend that he fired a shot against any Americans (or probably anyone else), or that he was involved in al Quaeda.
I don’t think his actions were sensible or admirable, but there’s no way they were illegal. And I’d like to think we live in a country of laws.
Let the public decide. Put David in the next series of Celebrity Big Brother.
It’s not like Hicksy won’t feel at home among the beady little cameras and one way mirrors.
Derrida Derider:
That’s easy.
Hicks is one of ours.
Now if the Yanks think so little of their Australian allies that they can’t even trust us to deal with him in our own well-established legal system then they should shop elsewhere for allies ….. and we’ll shop elsewhere for our own defenSe procurement needs too.
It was their choice …. now they’ll have wear the consequences of their arrogance.
The main obstacle with Hicks is that the public can see through the waffle & understand very clearly what is going on.
Only those with a tin ear for the mood of the Australian public are screaming about Hicks.
The public know where he is, know why he is there, & don’t want him back.
Perhaps he could be returned to Afghanistan & released into the custody of the SAS. Having lost one of their own in Afghanistan they will be in just the right mood to have all to themselves a fellow citizen who took up arms with the enemy.
SteveAtThePub:
THAT is exactly what should have happened in the first bloody place !!!.
Our SASR troops would have had very stern conversations with Mr Hicks’ about his particular views on politics and on cults and heresies. He would have been asked, WITHOUT the need for any violence or thuggishness, by competent and experienced people seeking genuine answers, about the company he kept. He would have been make feel about as welcome as a pork-chop in a Synagogue during Passover. But he would have been treated firmly and fairly then quickly escorted back to Australia, in good health and untortured but much sobered, to face the music back here.
That’s what should have happened. That it didn’t happen is a true measure of the scorn and contempt the Bush regime had for Australia and for the Australian troops who were in harm’s way.
You people are so misguided….as you say ya your boys would have “never hurt the poor ol hicks”…..sure, they wouldnt………..cause he was in the Gan fighting against Australians …oh, I forgot hicks WAS an Aussie………..beleive me the boys would have put him down instead of holding his hand (as you want). When your forced to pray for Allah then I’m sure your types will then cry “why didn’t the government do something” grow up..wankers or as I learned sepo. From the US/AUS coalition. GO HOWIE
I’m sure Ken that when those islamoterrorists spike our dwindling reservoirs with LSD, your comment will be finally be appreciated in the spirit of truimphant vindication you seem to be straining for.
Ken:
I’ve got some bad news for you. Despite having a common language (though some would dispute that) there is a world of difference in the training – and subsequent conduct in the field – between the Australians and the Americans.
As I have already made quite clear above [5:50pm 8 Jan], if Hicks had been in Australian hands he would have been handled very firmly and very fairly …. and promptly sent back to Australia to face our well-established systenm of justice; he would not have enjoyed the experience one little bit but he would have arrived back here safe and in good health. To say otherwise is to insult the members of the ADF and to infer they are unprofessional.
yes, when people resort to predicting a worldwide caliphate, you know they’re on something!
So Hicks was captured by the Northern Alliance (or people calling themselves that), and sold to the Americans for $5000. The Americans don’t seem to have had proper arrangements for dealing with prisoners of war in the Afghan conflict, other than executing them in shipping containers, and holding ‘high value’ detainees in Bagram and elsewhere, for shipment to Gitmo.
Now I know the retaliatory attack on Afghanistan was a highly charged affair in the context of the 9/11 attacks, but this situation, of Australian nationals fighting for ‘undesirable’ armies can’t be that unusual. There must be Australian mercenaries fighting for repressive governments all over the world. It seems the difference is that Hicks was acting independently, and that his ideology was religious rather than capitalist.
All that aside Will, Hicks/Daewood still backed the wrong team, one which happened to be against his own country.
A courtyard at dawn, blindfold & several rifles (one with a blank round) is what he deserves.
Will, you said
and then there are the Australians in the Israeli Defence Force and the Australians working as security contractors in Iraq, besides Australians in or with other armed forces and security firms around the world. What has been allowed to happen to Hicks has given future governments of Australia some very interesting and rather nasty precedents to play with ….. perhaps Howard may even have inadvertently foisted himself on his own petard.