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Topic: David Hicks - first victim of the Guantanamo show trials
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M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273
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posted 31 March 2007 04:11 PM
quote: It is appropriate that a person from Australia, home of the kangaroo, should be the first one dragged before the kangaroo court at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. David Hicks, imprisoned there for more than five years, pleaded guilty Monday to providing material support for terrorism.The case of Hicks offers us a glimpse into the Kafkaesque netherworld of detentions, kidnappings, torture and show trials that is now, internationally, the shameful signature of the Bush administration. Hicks’ passage through this sham process affords us all an opportunity to demand the closure of Guantanamo and an end to these heinous policies. Conditions may soon exist to shutter the prison, with George Bush’s lame-duck status, the Democratic takeover of Congress, the possible departure of Guantanamo’s arch-defender and architect, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and, if recent reports are true, a desire to close the prison on the part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. These bogus military commission trials amplify global contempt for the Guantanamo prison.
SourceHicks will likely be returned to Australia to serve his sentence, thanks to pressure from the Australian government. Canadian Omar Khadr, however, can expect no such treatment when his trial comes up, because Canada's New Government™ is quite happy to let him rot forever in a US prison.
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005
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trippie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12090
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posted 31 March 2007 11:23 PM
here is another analysis of this event... quote: The sham trial of Australian detainee David Hicks at the Bush administration’s prison camp at Guantánamo Bay is drawing to a close. Yesterday presiding judge Colonel Ralph Kohlman formally convicted Hicks on one charge of “providing material support for terrorism”, and released the details of a plea bargain that will return Hicks to Australia to serve his jail term. The deal provides for a maximum of seven years, but all but nine months have been suspended.The strenuous efforts to dress up proceedings cannot disguise the fact that the entire affair is a legal charade designed to justify the Bush administration’s phony “war on terror.” The plea bargain itself smacks of a dirty deal between Washington and Canberra. One of its key aims is to bolster the fortunes of the Howard government in upcoming national elections later in the year by wiping the issues of David Hicks and Guantánamo Bay off the political agenda. Hicks is the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be charged and tried before the newly constituted US military commission. His case has been fast tracked in order to accommodate Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s calls for an early resolution. Howard, who is directly responsible for Hicks’s protracted detention, only began calling for a speedier trial when opinion polls began recording overwhelming popular opposition to the flagrant abuse of Hicks’s basic democratic and legal rights.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/hick-m31.shtml
From: essex county | Registered: Feb 2006
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M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273
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posted 01 April 2007 05:18 PM
quote: The secret agreement that resulted in David Hicks facing only nine more months in prison may do fatal damage to an already discredited system of dealing with terrorism suspects, legal experts say. The combination of a sentencing deal arranged behind closed doors and the conditions imposed on Hicks, including a year-long gag order and a declaration that he was never tortured, has shown the process to be a political and not legal one, Australian and US observers say.Robert Richter, QC, one of Australia’s most experienced criminal lawyers and a Hicks supporter, said the trial was a sham that had wholly discredited the Pentagon’s war-crimes process. “The charade that took place at Guantanamo Bay would have done Stalin’s show trials proud,” Mr Richter said in a commentary for The Sunday Age. “First there was indefinite detention without charge. Then there was the torture, however the Bush lawyers, including his attorney-general, might choose to describe it. Then there was the extorted confession of guilt.”
Source
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jerry West
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1545
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posted 02 April 2007 10:49 AM
quote: Terror case plea deal sparks anger in US, Australia Short sentence for David Hicks seen as 'lenient,' and his gag order dubbed a 'political fix.' By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.comThe plea agreement that saw the release of "Aussie Taliban" David Hicks from detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has prompted harsh criticism - in the US as being too lenient, and in Australia as being a political tool in the upcoming elections. Mr. Hicks's plea agreement includes a nine-month prison sentence. Additionally, Hicks agreed not to allege that he was subjected to illegal treatment while in US custody, and not to speak with the media for one year. The Washington Post reports that the plea was crafted without the knowledge of prosecutors in his trial at the US military facility. Hicks had been facing two counts of providing material support for terrorism. His was the first case to be heard by special war crimes tribunals set up under the Military Commissions Act of 2006....
Full Article
From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001
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M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273
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posted 02 April 2007 03:02 PM
They didn't even bother with a show trial for this guy:UK man released from Guantanamo: quote: A British resident is back in the UK after being held in Guantanamo Bay for almost five years. Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, was held at the US detention camp in Cuba on suspicion of links to terrorism while on a trip to Gambia in 2002. In a statement Mr Rawi, a businessman from south-west London, said: "I am delighted to be back home in England, with my family." He added: "My nightmare is finally at an end." .... "As happy as I am to be home though, leaving my best friend Jamil al-Banna behind in Guantanamo Bay makes my freedom bittersweet," Mr Rawi said in a statement released through the law firm Reprieve. "Jamil was arrested with me in the Gambia on exactly the same unfounded allegations, yet he is still a prisoner. I also feel great sorrow for the other nine British residents who remain prisoners in Guantanamo Bay." .... "The extreme isolation they are going through is one of the most profoundly difficult things to endure. I know that all too well." .... His lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, gave further details on why Mr Rawi was originally arrested. He said a "suspicious device" was found in his client's luggage but added that it turned out to be a battery charger. Mr Katznelson added: "So it was misinformation that started this chain of events, though unfortunately that led to him first being taken by the CIA to Afghanistan to an underground prison of 24 hour darkness with rats everywhere, to then being taken to Guantanamo - and it took years to right this wrong." He accused the American authorities of treating Mr Rawi with "brutality". Mr Katznelson went on: "Right to the end they treated him with brutality, on the way to the plane in Guantanamo - they knew he was leaving - they insisted still on shackling him, blindfolding him, putting on earmuffs so he couldn't hear a thing and keeping him in the back of a very hot , very confined van on the way to the plane."
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005
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remind
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6289
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posted 20 May 2007 01:33 PM
Just an update: quote: McLeod said Hicks wanted to put the past behind him and would respect a U.S. gag stopping him speaking to the media for a year after his March conviction. -snip- Hicks, 31, was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and spent five years in Guantanamo before he was sentenced in March to seven years' jail. Under a deal with U.S. prosecutors, most of his sentence was suspended and he will be free on December 29, 2007. Hicks was the first person convicted by a U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War Two and the first of hundreds of foreign captives held at the Guantanamo Bay to face a military trial.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070520/ts_nm/australia_hicks_dc
From: "watching the tide roll away" | Registered: Jun 2004
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