Tag Archive for ‘David Hicks’ at Larvatus Prodeo

Tag Archive for 'David Hicks'

Hicks and Haneef

Published

1 week, 3 days ago

. 11 Comments

David Hicks will finally be able to get on with his life. The AFP has stated that there will be no new control order sought when the current one expires on December. Finally, Hicks’ abuse at the hands of two legal systems appears to be over. Here’s hoping that he can make a go of it.

Meanwhile, the Clarke Inquiry’s report has been handed over to the government. Hopefully an unclassified version will be publicly released in the near future. The upshot is likely to be that Mick Keelty’s time as AFP head will end; perhaps other senior AFP officers may follow him.

The bigger question is whether some of the more outrageous bits of legal machinery that made Haneef’s treatment possible will end. Frankly, I doubt it. The one example where Labor has acted on a perversion of justice - mandatory detention - they were at pains to pretend that they weren’t doing so. I think a similar thing will happen here. At best, a new AFP head will be appointed, new guidelines will be written so that the more outrageous “anti-terrorist” powers are no longer used, and maybe they’ll quietly get squashed as part of a broader review in a decade’s time. Maybe the sedition laws might go, but with this government’s commitment to censoring the interwebs demonstrating a pretty casual attitude to free speech, maybe not.

The politics of Hicks

Published

Kim

7 months ago

in Howardia, International, Law and Terrorism

. 74 Comments

If there’s any doubt remaining after the Haneef affair that what passes for justice in terrorism and law enforcement matters is nothing of the sort but a blatantly political bag of tricks, the comments from David Hicks’ prosecutor, Colonel Moe Davis, should lay it to rest.

The former chief prosecutor of the US military commissions at Guantanamo Bay said overnight he would not have pursued Hicks because the case against the Australian was not serious enough.

The ex-prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Moe Davis, told a pre-trial hearing for another Guantanamo Bay inmate he had “inherited” the Hicks case and wanted to focus on cases serious enough to merit 20-year jail sentences, with the Australian’s case not meeting that mark.

Davis also said the commissions were tainted by political influence and evidence obtained through prisoner abuse.

The mendacity of the Howard government - pushing for Hicks to be charged after he became a political problem, after letting him stew because doing so was a political advantage - stands exposed. Continue reading ‘The politics of Hicks’

Downer throws a tantrum, mocks America

Published

Atticus

1 year, 4 months ago

in Law, Levity, Politics and USA

. 50 Comments

Apparently Alexander Downer reckons he’s “never known such a bunch of cry-babies as the Labor Party”. I laughed when I read that, because last night I watched Downer’s amazing performance on the SBS World News. Here’s a summary:

Mean old Peter Beattie is bagging people, Kevin Rudd is smearing people, the media is writing mean headlines, Kevin Rudd is sneaky, “This is pathetic. It’s pathetic… it’s pathetic”, Labor is smearing people again, and Kevin Rudd is smearing people.

As Tim Dunlop wondered, “Can accusations that Mr Rudd is a poopy pants be far away?”

But the most interesting line in the SBS interview was this one:

STAN GRANT: But there are valid questions in the handling of this [the Haneef case] — the fact the SIM card was not found in the car, as was told to the court, the fact we now hear police had written personally names in Dr Haneef’s diary, the fact this has been so public that there have been allegations of leaking. It’s a wonder we’re not a laughing stock, isn’t it?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, but we don’t want to become a laughing stock by becoming like America, where the media are the judge and the jury.

Get that? Our foreign minister just declared that the United States of America is a laughing stock. Why do you hate our greatest ally, Alexander? This knee-jerk anti-Americanism is not a good look from a cabinet minister. We know that their legal system is no laughing stock — just ask David Hicks.

Purely coincidental Hicks release timing

Published

Robert Merkel

1 year, 8 months ago

in Federal Elections, Foreign policy and Politics

. 147 Comments

More details of the Hicks plea bargain are now available, and they reek of a political fix.

According to The Age article, the deal was negotiated by the management of the military tribunals, bypassing both the prosecution and the defence:

US Defence Department lawyer Susan Crawford, who oversees the US military tribunals, bypassed the prosecution to reach a pre-trial agreement directly with the defence.

But her actions, interpreted by some US newspapers as a political favour to Bush ally Prime Minister John Howard in an election year, shocked the prosecutors on the case and the American legal establishment.

Lead prosecutor Colonel Morris “Moe” Davis was kept in the dark about the plea deal. He was astounded by the nine-month sentence, telling The Washington Post: “I wasn’t considering anything that didn’t have two digits”, referring to a sentence of at least 10 years.

Ms Crawford’s deal, which includes a gag on Hicks talking to the media for 12 months, also overrode the sentence of the military panel, which had agreed to seven years.

The timing would of course mean that while Hicks’s long nightmare will come to a relatively quick end, nothing will be heard directly from him until safely after the next federal election.

Ruddock and Downer claim no foreknowledge of the deal and that the extraordinarily politically convenient timing was pure coincidence, Ruddock claiming that he “was not aware that the Australian Government had put any view to the Americans on the length of sentence.”

What a strange world in which we live in which our ministers’ most remarkable talent is their incredible ability to not be aware of anything that might be politically inconvenient.

UPDATE: A lengthy, informative, and insightful post from Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy, who digs up more reports of political handprints all over the deal.

Gunns, Turnbull & Due Process

Published

Anna Winter

1 year, 8 months ago

in Environment, Government and Policy

. 21 Comments

A guest post by Bernice.

Overnight, Turnbull, Federal Environment Minister, announced plans to spend $200 million, aiming to stop deforestation in Asia.

Mr Turnbull says a global response is needed and the $200 million project will be used to plant trees and reduce illegal logging in South-East Asia.

“The funding will go, given the nature of our geography, will largely go to South-East Asia,” Mr Turnbull said.

“The biggest deforesters in the world or the places where the most deforestation of tropical forests is occurring are in Brazil and Indonesia, they’re the top two so naturally our focus is going to be on our part of the world but we’re not limiting it to that.”

Timing is everything in politics, as The White Rabbitt knows. In a week where the issue of David Hicks has been neutralised, his government suddenly pulls this out of the hat. On the same day that Howard met Nicholas Stern. On the same day that Howard demonstrated his continuing skepticism regarding the impact of climate change. His comments about Stern were at the best patronising, at the worst downright insulting, but more importantly, he again demonstrated he simply doesn’t get it. It’s the environment, stupid.

Continue reading ‘Gunns, Turnbull & Due Process’

Hicks pleads guilty

Published

Robert Merkel

1 year, 8 months ago

in Crime, Foreign policy, Government, Howardia, Law, Politics and USA

. 263 Comments

ABC story here. The government thinks the plea-bargain is just fine and dandy, though Alexander Downer is indulging in hand-wringing over the delays in the trial process.

There are a million observations that could be made about this debacle. But one that strikes me is that for all the aberrations of this process, the end result of the trial is all too common in the US criminal justice system, at least as I understand it. A guilty plea, in the face of draconian penalties from a guilty verdict on the original charges, with the promise of a radical sentence reduction. And thus we will never get a satisfactory legal test of Hicks’ actual guilt or innocence.

One other question - what should Labor do if Hicks is in an Australian prison when a Rudd government (cross fingers) comes to power later this year, or early 2008?

UPDATE: in comments, Atticus links to a long but informative law review article that argues that the plea-bargains struck in military tribunals are unconstitutional because of their unfairness. Interesting, though I wonder about the implication that the normal operation of the plea-bargaining system in the USA is actually fair…

The Amateur Technocrat V

Published

Gummo Trotsky

1 year, 8 months ago

in Developing world, Life and Poverty

. 14 Comments

The Stale Bread Crusts of Compassion

Mirko Bagaric, a legal academic by profession and a practial moral philosopher by avocation has had another original insight that he’s eager to share with us. As you’ll recall, insights that Bagaric has eagerly shared with us in the past include:

good governance is based on a sound understanding of the human condition; bad governance ignores the human condition in favour of the trumped-up notion of “human rights�?;
any “human right�?, however codified, can be trumped by the common good as determined by a pragmatic, accountable politician in times of crisis.

Continue reading ‘The Amateur Technocrat V’

Mori to do time? Unlikely.

Published

tigtog

1 year, 9 months ago

in Federal Elections, Howardia, Law and USA

. 26 Comments

So I turn on the tabloid TV this morning, and there’s much agitation about the possibility that Major Michael Mori, one of the military lawyers for David Hicks and a personal fave in the shyster ranks, may face charges that carry a prison sentence for using “contemptuous words” about high ranking US officials. The story arises from remarks made by the chief prosecutor for the American military commissions which will try the accused “unlawful combatants” held at Guantanamao Bay.

“Certainly in the U.S. it would not be tolerated having a U.S. marine in uniform actively inserting himself into the political process,” Davis said. “It is very disappointing to see that happening in Australia, and if that was any of my prosecutors, they would be held accountable.”

He added that it would be up to the Marine Corps to decide whether Mori had violated Article 88 of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which makes it a crime for a military officer to use “contemptuous words” about the president, vice president, secretary of defense and other high-ranking officials.

Continue reading ‘Mori to do time? Unlikely.’

A de facto republic?

Published

Gummo Trotsky

1 year, 9 months ago

in Howardia, Law and Politics

. 49 Comments

Commonwealth Solicitor General, David Bennett QC, has been saying some extraordinary things in the courts lately - and not just about asteroids. On Tuesday there was a lot of kerfuffling in the papers about his claim, in the Federal Court, that the Commonwealth Government was under no obligation to provide David Hicks - or any other Australian travelling overseas - with diplomatic protection.

When you read press reports and blog posts about High Court judges - and the Solicitor General - saying silly things during Court proceedings, it’s easy enough to get hold of the transcripts on-line to check for yourself what was actually said. Not so with the Federal Court, where transcripts have to be ordered on a fee-for-service basis. Bit of a bugger that, because all you’re left to go on is the press reports and commentary, such as this Age editorial:

Solicitor-General David Bennett, QC, has argued that the Government has no duty to protect Hicks, and that an obligation to protect Australians overseas “is something that the law has never recognised”. There was “no duty” for a government to consider making a request to another country about one of its citizens.

Continue reading ‘A de facto republic?’

Golden boy

Published

suz

1 year, 9 months ago

in Media

. 40 Comments

The Australian today had a very strange cover story. No, not the one about the world’s nuclear superpower hinting that it’s going to go to war against a country which might possibly at some time in the future be able to make a nuclear weapon. I mean the other cover story, accompanied by photos, under the headline: Hicks was al-Qa’ida’s golden boy: inmate

In fact (if I may be so bold as to use the word “fact”), the man making that claim about Hicks is a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay. In fact (sorry, I have to use it again), he’s actually retracted his claim. But we aren’t told that until paragraph four of the story (and in a small part of a long photo caption). And then the article continues recounting the former inmate’s claims, as though it hadn’t just told us that in fact (sorry, again) Feroz Abbasi has entirely repudiated his previously written account about Hicks, describing the allegations against Hicks as “ludicrous”.

So ludicrous are they that The Australian finds it necessary to immediately repeat in juicy detail anecdotes like this: “He once told me in Afghanistan that if he were to go into a building of Jews with an automatic weapon or as a suicide bomber he would have to say something like, ‘there is no God but Allah’ ect (sic) just so he could see the look of fear on their faces, before he takes them out,” Abbasi wrote.

Yet we’ve been told that Abbas has since totally repudiated this account. So why print it?

Continue reading ‘Golden boy’

Backflip on Hicks coming up?

Published

Robert Merkel

1 year, 9 months ago

in Howardia and Politics

. 25 Comments

Well, we’ve had the backflip from the Libs on climate change, despite the fact that they don’t believe it (Nick Minchin is just the only one silly enough to say so in public).

And it seems we’ll get the backflip on David Hicks as well, with the government reportedly working to get Hicks home, conveniently before the federal election.

From a political standpoint, I can’t help but be reminded of 2001 and petrol excise.

What else is he going to ditch between now and the visit to the Governor-General? Substantive change on WorkChoices is pretty unlikely, but would he be tempted to declare victory in Iraq and start bringing troops back? We know Johnny loves his alliance, but surely he loves his own political skin more.

Breaking news: Hicks charge sheet published

Published

Mark

1 year, 9 months ago

in Law, Politics and War

. 67 Comments

I guess it’s still mid February, sort of!

Via Ken Parish, the US military have published the particulars of the charges against David Hicks on the net [link to pdf].

Three Lazy Pieces

Published

Gummo Trotsky

1 year, 9 months ago

in Ethics, Government and Law

. 29 Comments

Ruthless prolific self-promoter and soi-dissant moral philosopher, Dr Mirko Bagaric scored a mention in yesterday’s “Missing Link�? at Club Troppo, with a link to this “steep and winding argument that David Hicks’ military tribunal is fair enough�? at Bagaric’s blog.

The post is a reprint (or rehash) of an article that appeared in the Canberra Times on 8 February. It’s the third Bagaric piece that I’ve read this year where the good Doctor has based his argument on the premise that “human rights�? do not exist (hence the scare quotes).

Continue reading ‘Three Lazy Pieces’

Deadlines

Published

suz

1 year, 10 months ago

in Howardia, Law and War

. 71 Comments

The Big Little Man wants us to know that he’s calling the shots in Guantanamo Bay.

Prime Minister John Howard said he was pleased the charges were to be laid before a mid-February deadline that he had set.

“I’m glad that the charges are being laid and that the deadline I set has been met,” Mr Howard told reporters today at his Sydney residence Kirribilli House.

I wonder exactly when he set that deadline? After all, “They are very serious charges and that is why they should be dealt with as soon as possible.”

Quite how Howard defines “as soon as possible” when Hicks has been interned without charges (let alone a trial) for over five years is mind boggling.

Well, it would be mind boggling if we didn’t all know that Howard’s posturing is just that - posturing. A sham. As much of a sham as the possible charges. (They’re not even real charges yet, only possible, perhaps probable, charges.) Attempted murder? Of who? I’m not a lawyer but I would have thought that the least a charge of attempted murder requires is a potential murder victim - but I gather that this charge is a kind of catch-all, nebulous accusation that David Hicks was in a war zone without being a US-designated legal killer.

Never in his wildest dreams could Kafka have come up with this.

Word of the Day: Abominable

Published

Gummo Trotsky

1 year, 11 months ago

in Media and Politics

. 19 Comments

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)

Continue reading ‘Word of the Day: Abominable’

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