A very moving piece....not asking for anything anybody reading wouldn't ask for in the same circumstances.
I mean even that scum Martin Bryant kills 35 people and is tried and locked up for life within a year. Tony Mokbel, drug dealer and apparently orderer of "hits", gets bail and pisses off. Milosevic is tried in the Hague and locked up until his death.
Hell, even the f****** Nazi's were tried in 1946-48, up to 3 years after the end of the War for being responsible for 50,000,000 deaths.
If David is guilty of anything try him and lock him according to the principles of the Magna Carta, that apply in all Anglo-American Law....including habeus corpus....something Bush wouldn't have a clue about despite banning it and probably can't pronounce. Or if he is innocent, free him.
How are the Rodent, Shirley and Undertaker Eichmann going to continue spining this out (and all their coments pre-trial thus far have probably broken the Law anyway) one wonders?
"Bring on the trial, but only if it's a fair one
January 21, 2007
Terry Hicks desperately wants an end to five years of uncertainty about his son's welfare and legal position.
IT ALL started on Tuesday, December 9, 2001, when we were visited by ASIO and the Australian Federal Police to tell us David had been arrested and was now being held by the US.
We believed David would face a proper court system, not a system set up to find him guilty.
We have said all along that if David was found guilty, we would stand by him. But we have since found that the US would not put their own through this system, so it shows us how unfair and unjust this system is, and even the US Supreme Court ruled this process illegal. With a lot of hard work and help from within and outside the family, we have managed to change the views of many people, particularly on human rights issues.
The way both Australian and American governments have handled this situation has been disgusting. In the past five years I cannot count the number of times that I have heard or read blatant lies or slants of the truth about David, the situation he is in, even about our family. I urge you to take this Government and media spin with a grain of salt.
As an example, take the photo of David holding an unloaded weapon, which is often flashed on the news. This is a posed photo taken of him and other foreigners in Kosovo while with UN troops.
David and many other detainees have been illegally held by the US in Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions and International Bill of Human Rights.
Over the years we have been able to write to David through the International Red Cross and then through the US-appointed lawyer, Major Michael Mori. Our letters are subject to rigorous censorship and can take up to 12 weeks to reach him. In the first year of David's internment, almost every letter we posted was returned to us, courtesy of the US Administration.
David's letters have been few and far between over the years and are also subject to censorship. We have not received any correspondence from him since January 2005, owing to his depression. He also had nothing to write about as he had told us what he could about the camp and had become very repetitive in his writing to us.
We have been allowed two family visits during the five years of David's detention. In August 2004, my wife and I were able to visit David during the first military hearing. Another member of our family was allowed to visit in October of the same year. These visits were brief (two or three meetings of about 20 minutes), monitored by security or government officials, and David was shackled to the floor during each.
We have been granted five phone calls with David since his incarceration. These phone calls take place in the Adelaide office of Australian Foreign Affairs. They are monitored and usually 20 to 30 minutes. We are not able to discuss anything relevant to his detainment or legal situation, or the call will be ended. The last phone call we were granted was in December 2006; however, David refused to speak with us. Major Mori advised that this was because David was emotionally stressed and did not think he could cope with talking to the family. We are eager to speak to David and hear for ourselves how he is, and now we are even more concerned about his wellbeing.
When they choose to contact us, government officials have told us that David is "fit and well". In fact, this statement is made in almost every standard response to our letters.
I have never been granted a meeting with the Prime Minister or Foreign Affairs Minister, and only recently had a meeting with the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock. We are still waiting for replies to issues we raised at that November meeting, including information on David's mental and physical wellbeing, and hopefully more communication with David. But most of the information we glean about David is through sympathetic members of the media, or Major Mori.
Last year Major Mori advised us that David has lost hope, lost appetite, and is incredibly depressed. He is in solitary confinement in a cement block cell for 23 hours of every day and has been since March of last year. This is his second bout of solitary confinement, the previous time for 18 months. We believe this time his confinement is due to his complaints of his treatment during a consular visit in March 2006. It was the day after this visit that David was placed into solitary.
A common statement issued by our Government is that David's family and lawyers are holding up the process by questioning the legality of military commissions. The truth is that we would welcome an immediate trial and end to David's situation but only if the process is a just one. A military commission does not provide a just judicial process; this fact has been backed by many well-known Australian and international legal experts. This is supported, I believe, by the fact that the Americans did not allow their own citizens to undergo the same commissions.
I find it disheartening that David's legal team must try other measures to ensure that he is not subjected to a biased and unfair military process, completely overseen and controlled by the US Administration.
■ See document "The Australian Government's Position on David Hicks", December 7, 2006; website lawcouncil.asn.au
Terry Hicks is the father of Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks.
