Bring David Hicks home (from Guantanamo) before Christmas!

The injustice of his position. Absolutely!
I don't think he's exactly been presented as some sort of hero.
I've certainly had reservations, myself, about his actions, but have been far more appalled by his treatment by the US & Oz governments.

a muslim convert who goes to Afghanistan to learn to kill...sorry no sympathy whatsoever.

I think there HAS been some tendency to make him out as some sort of totally innocent victim, actually, on the part of some. (Not, I think, by you, Msolga)


I get frustrated by the seeming inability of many to actually keep two realities/concepts in their head at the same time.....in this case that someone can likely have meant, in whatsoever dumb and pathetic manner, to do evil, and that nonetheless that it is actually the mark of a society that is attempting to be just and observe the rule of law (which I consider incredibly important....doh) to determine to treat even people we don't approve of with justice and the rule of law.




It is like these, to me, utterly sickening kind of blood frenzies that break out here re paedophiles or some other group....you know, "cut their peckers off, label them as paedophiles in prison and let "nature" take its course".

I have no respect for the position or sense of those who call for humane treatment of people....until someone happens to offend their sensibilities, and who then advocate barbarity..... and the mindset of those who, when someone points out their position is ethically and logically bankrupt, accuse one of "supporting paedophiles/murderers/terrorists.....manichean crap.


Pah!


Hicks had a right to decent treatment (NOT solitary for five years, with a light on 24 hours etc) and a fair trial. America stands concemned for its treatment of hiom, just as I am happy to condemn his behaviour. The two are not mutually exclusive.


I know you know this, Msolga, it is just a deeply frustrated rant!

Hicks faces about a year in Australian jail
Tom Allard
March 29, 2007 - 12:00AM/SMH

DAVID HICKS will be behind bars in Australia until after this year's election, but his stint in an Adelaide prison will be relatively short, under a plea bargain being hammered out between prosecutors and his defence counsel.

Government sources confirmed yesterday that Hicks's prospective sentence would take into account his five years and two months in Guantanamo Bay but would also include a short period to be served in Australia. That period is "not close" to the five years being mooted in some reports, one government official said. The Herald understands that additional time to be served in Australia is about a year.

The outcome, still to be approved by a panel of US military commission officials and its Convening Authority, is a bonus for the Federal Government, as Hicks will be unable to conduct potentially embarrassing interviews before this year's election.

Terry Hicks, who heard of his son's guilty plea on an airport tarmac as he prepared to leave Guantanamo Bay for Australia, yesterday blamed the Federal Government for influencing the court hearing and forcing the guilty plea. "They demonised him, they prejudged him for five years," he said. "I suppose Mr Howard would be throwing his hands up with glee at the moment, but ... this was a way out for David regardless of whether he was guilty or innocent."

Mr Howard said he was not into "glee and vindication". "I understand how Mr Hicks feels. It is his son," he said. "I respect that, but let me deal with the facts. His son has pleaded guilty to a charge that he knowingly gave assistance to a known terrorist organisation, namely al-Qaeda."

But there is no doubt the Government is delighted. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said yesterday the Government had unashamedly "been tough on the Hicks case". However, it remains unclear how long it will take for Hicks to return. First he and his lawyers have to agree on which of 24 specific allegations that underpinned the charge of providing material support to terrorists he will admit to. ...<cont>

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hicks-faces-about-a-year-in-australian-jail/2007/03/28/1174761570924.html

Sounds to me like Howard has done a deal with Uncle W, to get rid of an electoral liability.

Anyone think I am being too cynical?



Edit: Lol! Just looked at the cartoon.

Clearly, my cynicism is reflected everywhere.

Good morning, Deb.

I was half-way through a ponderous, lengthy response to your previous post last night when KAPUT! it vanished! (Continuing Adventures in Luddite Land. A long story! ) But perhaps it's as well, I could have been accused of all sorts of things this morning! I will have another go later. I think you raised some interesting issues there ......

Are you being too cynical over the Hicks verdict?

Hell no! That's what everyone thinks!

Check out the letters to the editor in my morning paper today. (The AGE, in Melbourn.:


An indelible stain on this Government

THE Hicks affair is a longstanding disgrace. It will forever remain an irremovable stain on the Howard Government ?- which, for years, has actively supported and promoted the prolonged solitary confinement, the denial of human and legal rights and the psychological torture of an Australian citizen.

It has supported a regime that has rewritten the law at Guantanamo to remove the basic legal rights and safeguards we all expect. Rights of habeas corpus have been removed. Retrospective laws can make anyone guilty of anything. The Geneva Convention has been eliminated. There is no longer any form of presumption of innocence for suspects ?- just pre-trial statements of guilt. You can be convicted on secret evidence that you cannot access. The legal system is now "plead guilty now or rot in this hell-hole forever".

However the key issues are not about Hicks. They are about the fundamental changes to the basis of Western law and human rights. With the exception of our inappropriately named Attorney-General, the Australian legal fraternity has universally condemned the process. Regrettably the real terrorist attack on democracy is coming internally from our own Western leaders, not from Islam nor from al-Qaeda.

The disappointment is that a majority of Australians have long been too uninterested or self-absorbed to understand or protest against this erosion of our legal system and our fundamental rights

Graeme Scarlett, East Malvern


In La-La Land

THE Howard Government is in La-La Land if it thinks David Hicks is no longer an election issue. Late last year, a seachange occurred among Coalition voters. Maybe it was the five-year anniversary of Hick's incarceration that did it, but something caused the scales to fall from their eyes and they finally saw Howard, Ruddock and Downer for what they really are: so ruthless as to drive an Australian citizen to the brink of insanity in order to appear tough on terrorism. And they saw that these three only found "compassion" when they realised they were out of step with the vast majority of their supporters. They will not forget.

Lloyd Swanton, Wentworth Falls, NSW


No political mileage

TO PARTIALLY quote D. Fraser (Letters, 28/3), now that David Hicks has pleaded guilty to the main charge five years' incarceration in Guantanamo Bay has produced, I hope that Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard et al do not attempt to get political mileage from the fact that the man in all probability will be back on Australian soil before the election. To do so would be seen by those Australians who are aware that Hicks knowingly took up arms in support of Osama bin Laden as a cynical attempt to capitalise on something that would not have occurred if it was not an election year. To do so would see them show their displeasure at the ballot box.

D.M. Murison, Hawthorn East


The assault on our freedoms continues

FOR David Hicks to be held in jail in Australia to serve whatever sentence the Guantanamo tribunal may dispense (The Age, 28/3), he will have to be denied the normal resort to appeal, review and habeas corpus that is every other Australian prisoner's right. Otherwise, any Australian court before which he were brought would be bound to release him on the ground that he has neither committed any offence that obtains under Australian law nor been convicted by any legal process that an Australian court can recognise.

In keeping Hicks in jail at the behest of the US military's irregular tribunal, Messrs Howard and Ruddock will be betraying more than this one desperate Australian citizen. Once he is returned to Australia, they have committed themselves to subverting the foundations of Australian law and, accordingly, to degrading the very freedoms that the so-called war on terror was meant to safeguard.

Patrick Wolfe, Carlton North


Political ends

THE plea bargain effectively forced on David Hicks should be seen as no more than the inevitable confession of a tortured man. Having been Guantanamo-ed for five years, and the final screw turned with the stripping from his defence of two legal counsel at a critical moment, Hicks cannot be blamed for failing to challenge his charges through to the end. Desperation did indeed drive the deal.
And what of the US military prosecutor Morris Davis forecasting Hicks' return to Australia by year's end? It all smacks of cynical orchestration between the US and Australian governments. And that's all the more worrying when the system can be manipulated to political ends but never to deliver timely justice, or justice at all.

Darren Lewin-Hill, Northcote


A cop-out

DAVID Hicks' "guilty" plea is a cop-out. Not only has he abandoned his innocence, but he has also spared himself (and his misguided supporters) the embarrassing displeasure of having to sit through the damning evidence exposing his links to one of most oppressive, human rights-abusing regimes on the planet.

Instead, pleading guilty has allowed him some room to hide behind both the political and legal arguments regarding process, therefore attaining for himself an almost cult hero status among the anti-American crowd.

For the innocent Afghan victims of the tyrannical Taliban regime, this last result is a cruel injustice indeed.

Steven Sher, Glen Iris


Non-core plea

DAVID Hicks' plea does not reflect his guilt. His plea is a product of the coercion that saturates the entire military tribunal and its relationship with Guantanamo Bay. Five years of torturous conditions with the prospect of it continuing indefinitely would be enough to make even the most stubborn man admit he did something that he did not necessarily do. Such conditions could even break John Howard's resolve to never apologise or say "sorry" for wrongs (even if he felt he was not personally responsible).

Jay Tilley, Brunswick


Mind games

IF DAVID Hicks had been born with a Middle Eastern name and had a dark swarthy appearance and pleaded guilty to terrorism acts, then we would have believed him and felt a little more comfy.

Hang on. A few weeks ago wasn't there some other bloke who fitted that description and made confessions which we also chose to doubt? I can't figure it out.

Perhaps it's a case of us applying too much reverse-reverse psychology. In any case, Osama must be chuckling.

Tony Chew, Ballarat


Comrades in arms?

YESTERDAY morning on ABC Radio, the chief prosecutor for the US military commissions, Colonel Moe Davis, defended imprisoning people in Guantanamo Bay for over five years, remarking that the US soldiers in Vietnam had been held for up to nine years without charge. What this says is that the US does not feel the need to behave any better than its enemies. And it comes terribly close to saying that the long imprisonment of US troops in Vietnam was a legitimate part of the war ?- removing enemy combatants from the field. How do Vietnam vets feel about that comparison?

Rob Wiseman, St Kilda


An editorial for all seasons

YESTERDAY'S editorial, "A travesty of justice", should be compulsory reading for every citizen of this country.
Many great editorials have been published in this paper ?- and some not so great ?- but in this you have surpassed yourself. Your words "When a duty of care to a national is jettisoned for reasons of political alliance, every citizen should feel afraid" would not have been out of place coming from Sir Thomas More. Indeed, I was reminded not only by the substance but by the cadence of that sentence, of the words given to More in A Man for All Seasons: "When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties … they lead their country by a short route to chaos."

I doubt that Messrs Howard, Ruddock and Downer would applaud either More's or your words. Worse, they would not recognise the wisdom or relevance to themselves of either.

Helen McTaggart, Seaford


Material support for terrorism?

IF DAVID Hicks can be convicted for "material support for terrorism", I fail to understand why Australian Wheat Board executives and members of our own Government are still at liberty.

AWB funnelled $300 million of taxpayers' money to our so-called enemy Saddam Hussein while Australian soldiers were in Iraq fighting a war. According to the PM's own statements at the time, Saddam had clear terrorist connections. Why then do we not see those responsible for this abysmal "bribe" charged under our counter-terrorism laws?

John Howard must be hoping for a collective dose of amnesia and unconsciousness to descend over the electorate next November. I for one plan to stay awake.

Nina Philadelphoff-Puren, Oakleigh

http://www.theage.com.au/letters/index.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Not quite the responses that Howard, Ruddock & Alexander were hoping for! :wink:

Hell, they fixed the problem, didn't they?

God, we Australians are a cynical, ungrateful, uncouth lot!

... & the bit about David Hicks spending an extra year in an Oz jail is just priceless!

Not a word from him allowable during the election campaign! Isn't that handy?

How transparent can you get?

... & this was yesterday's AGE editorial:


A travesty of justice
March 28, 2007

David Hicks' guilty plea is neither cause for joy nor a validation of the processes by which it was derived.

THE bough has broken. Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks yesterday pleaded guilty before a military commission of having provided material support to al-Qaeda and of being associated with an armed conflict. His sentence is due to be given this week. Before Hicks' court appearance, critics had labelled Guantanamo Bay and the form of justice it represented as a mockery of the rule of law. Yesterday mockery became travesty.

Supporters of the United States' incarceration of alleged terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and the judicial process the US established there will see Hicks' guilty plea as evidence of culpability. On the surface it is. If someone pleads guilty, they therefore did it. That conclusion may be sustainable in a recognised court of law in the US, Australia or Britain. But the military commission procedures at Guantanamo Bay have been anything but ordinary. Indeed, the legal foundations on which they were built have been condemned worldwide ?- although not by the Australian Government ?- and have been challenged successfully through the court system. The new US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, told US President George Bush recently that the trials that arose from Guantanamo Bay were viewed with great suspicion globally and that the camp itself should be shut down. America's credibility as a defender of justice was being tarnished. Justice was not being seen to be done, or in fact being done.

David Hicks has been at Guantanamo Bay for five years; a substantial amount of that time has been in solitary confinement. This week's appearance was the third time he had faced proceedings, beginning in 2004 when he pleaded not guilty. Legal challenges, including going to the Supreme Court, have delayed procedures. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled against the commissions. The US Government then drafted new laws to circumvent the court's ruling.

Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001. The US says Hicks attended al-Qaeda training camps and was in Afghanistan to fight coalition forces. Hicks was moved to Cuba in 2002. The then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, described those picked up in the US sweeps of Afghanistan as the "worst of the worst" terrorists.

The suspension of basic legal rights to the detainees, which was one of the reasons the US categorised them as enemy combatants and packed them away on non-US soil out of reach of the legal system, has been loudly and widely damned from the United Nations, the European Union, human rights groups, politicians of conservative and liberal persuasion, legal organisations and the man and woman in the street. The abuse, not only of the detainees' legal rights but to their physical and mental health, serves neither the interests of justice nor the reputation of the countries that have acquiesced to the quasi-judicial process.

David Hicks is likely to be home before Christmas under a prisoner exchange program between the US and Australia. It is possible he may serve any remaining time at a maximum-security prison in South Australia, his home state. The maximum sentence that Hicks could receive is 20 years, although the chief prosecutor in the case has indicated it may be less than that. Prime Minister John Howard may say his efforts helped expedite Hicks' return home, but his Government's lamentable efforts at representing one of its citizen's interests has been disgraceful. When a duty of care to a national is jettisoned for reasons of political alliance, every citizen should feel afraid. David Hicks has spent five years cut adrift. His plea of guilty, given as it was in the half-light of a system that operates outside judicial norms, illuminates nothing. A guilty plea rendered under such circumstances carries with it little faith in the integrity of the process.

Has Hicks' plea validated the existence of Guantanamo Bay or the process by which its detainees have been treated? No. Has justice been served? No.

What then have the past five years come to symbolise? That is the easy part: a bough breaking.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/a-travesty-of-justice/2007/03/27/1174761465495.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

This woman is right on the money.

Call for an independent inquiry, during which, lock up all the suspects in a concrete box, in solitary, and leave the lights on.

Oh, and no need to hurry the inquiry. In fact, leave it until the next election. See you in five years, Howard and Downer.

Good morning, Builder.

Nice day on the Sunshine coast?

Of course that woman is right on the money!

I couldn't believe how the Libs got away with the AWB scandal. It should have had a huge impact!

It is a beautiful day here, Msolga.

In reality, I don't think they got away with the scandal at all. For the thinkers and awake amongst us, the whole process reeked of scandal and cover-up from top to bottom.

And Howler wonders why people think he's an arrogant SOB?

Dead duck in the water is what he is at the moment.

Downer has never had an ounce of credibility anyway, so no real loss for him.

Sadly, I believe that they did get away with it, Builder.

In the sense that it was a scandal of monumental proportions & it didn't affect the government's standing one iota in the polls. Amazing!

It did huge damage to this country's reputation internationally & yet somehow the government was able to absolve itself of responsibility. How they got away with getting AWB Board take the sole responsibility (in the media & apparently in public perception) is beyond my comprehension. By pleading ignorance of things they would have been totally aware of! (And if they weren't aware, then they were totally incompetent!)
I mean, funds going directly into Saddam's coffers just before (& after) Australian troops were about become part of the invasion of Iraq? That made Pig Iron Bob look like an amateur!



Enjoy your beautiful day up there!

Let's just call it an ace up the sleeve, Msolga.

When the new government wins by a landslide, (no ifs or buts about it for mine) a groundswell of disbelief and discontent will attend the outing of documented material that the current incumbents would not disclose for the previous inquiry.

I'm surprised that Rudd isn't focussed on it now, but like I said, it's an ace up the sleeve for him.

I may be wrong, but I have a feeling we haven't heard the last of it, as yet.

For some reason (which totally confounds & escapes me!) the AWB scandal failed to capture the public's imagination. People seemed to be more concerned about our wheat markets than anything else. There where so many other important issues there!
I was hugely disappointed that the government got away with so much.

Anyway .... do you think that JH is now considered a public hero after doing a deal with the US over David Hicks? And that folk will now rush to vote for him in November as a result? :wink:

It must be totally confusing to anyone overseas whose paid any attention to this case. I mean, he's the first Guantanamo inmate to declare his guilt & he's "rewarded" by being allowed to go home, with a year in an Oz jail. What happened to the 20 year sentence for such a diabolical, hardened "terrorist"?
What a farce!

It's all about sound bytes for the listening audience. Saturation coverage of 9-11 numbed and voided anyone's interest in the situation.

There were also other major events happening, like Drew Barrymore splitting with her fella; Naomi Campbell throwing her cell phone at her hausfrau, oh, and not to be forgetting the global warming issue.

Huge, that one.



We do have so much wheat in storage, that we must offload it before it becomes old stock. Simple economics dictates that the wheat must be sold, because the owner of that wheat has already paid to grow and harvest it. That's why I'm not surprised that the bribes were so high.

I was a bit stunned to find out how much they added up to, but that just emphasises the fact that the continuation of money transfers would have raised a few eyebrows. Or it should have.




Too many fingers in the pie is why, Msolga.

Take out one scapegoat, and he's likely to turn turtle on you.




Now this is a real tough one. No.





Another real tough one. No.





Hmmm, my estimates were for three or two years. He got off lightly in my court. I'm thinking that anyone sympathetic to Hick's cause would be applauding the decision. The defense would have raised the issue that Al Qu'aeda was still being funded through Pakistan's ISI at the time that David joined up. That would make him an ally.



Don't wish him bad luck, please? He's had enough already.

As I've stated elsewhere here, Howler's tone changed abruptly re the Iraq occupation, the very day that CheneyDude stepped off the continent.

And next thing we get Hicks back home for a year at the low-security local gym facility. Interesting...............

PIB ... bonzai's hero ...

I always felt PIB was sort of anti-Australian, as he seemed to be obsessed by the Queen and the "old country". You know, " we will defend Britain to the last Australian" type of thing. That's apart from the scrap metal that our northern neighbours fired back at us.
Oh well, just rambling here .....

On a morning current affairs tv show today the discussion swung round to David Hicks.

One of the panelists expressed the view that Guantanamo Bay would be preferable to a year or two in Adelaide.

For some strange reason that struck me as funny.

It's as hot as a bastard in either location right about now, Lezzles.

The notable difference would be that David can have visitors.