Five years of Guantanamo: Justice delayed is justice denied

[Michaelangelica]

What is the longest anyone has been locked up there now?

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.truth-out...avid-hicks67815

 

I asked Hicks if he could describe the facial expressions of his tormentors while he was being tortured and if he recalled how they reacted to his pain.

 

"Usually the guards seemed cold and indifferent," Hicks said. "They deployed a just doing my job attitude, such as when they chained me to the floor in stress positions or made me sleep directly on a metal or concrete floor in a very cold air-conditioned room in only a pair of shorts. However some soldiers displayed discomfort and embarrassment. Usually guards were only used to restrain detainees, move them about, or help in the background with equipment. It was the interrogators who did the dirty work, expressing, hatred and frustration. At times soldiers did participate directly in beatings however, such the beatings I received before I arrived in GTMO (in Afghanistan, in transit, or when I was rendered to the two naval ships before being sent to Guantanamo). These soldiers made a sport of it.

 

"I was beaten by US forces the first time I saw them and realized straight away that torture was going to be a reality. It was very scary. As I say in my book, I could not help thinking of the saying, 'like trying to get blood from a stone and I was afraid of becoming that stone.'"

Note: Hicks' book is not available for sale in the US. However, it can be ordered from online bookshops in Australia.

[Michaelangelica]

Hicks file courtesy of WikiLeaks

http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/pdf/as/us9as-000002dp.pdf

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison

 

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

 

The old man was transported to Cuba to interrogate him about "suspicious phone numbers" found in his compound. The 14-year-old was shipped out merely because of "his possible knowledge of Taliban...local leaders"

 

The documents also reveal:

 

• US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

 

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/we-stood-up-for-hicks-because-australia-failed-to-when-it-mattered-20110524-1f2e5.html

 

Did he break any law? No. Even John Howard admits that much.

 

Did he harm a single person? No.

 

Yet we allowed an Australian citizen to be held, tortured and convicted by a tribunal known to be unfair at the time and discredited by the US President himself. Britain did not stand for that sort of treatment of its citizens.

 

It is disingenuous to maintain Hicks is guilty of terrorist activity - the evidence would not stack up in a proper court and the likes of Lapkin know that. Hicks's conviction should be set aside.

 

What is to be gained by continuing to demonise him? Simply, he is a soft target. Casting him as a villain who should be hounded for the proceeds of his book will fool some into thinking our politicians are on the case, getting the bad guys.

 

We have to be wary of taking as fact what spy agencies and politicians choose to tell us. As the Pentagon Papers showed, they have their own agendas. And as the Guantanamo Bay dossiers - riddled with errors - show, they can get it very wrong.

 

Alexander Downer, the foreign minister who oversaw the sorry saga, was recently asked whether he had read Hicks's dossier. He said no, he could not be bothered, it's all just history now. We deserve better than that. Downer's arrogance is matched by his contempt for truth and justice.

 

The former prime minister John Howard, who led us into war under false pretences - a war in which many Australians were killed - also appeared at the writers' festival, funded by taxpayers.

 

Governments fund these festivals because they promote greater understanding and debate, as the Hicks session certainly did.

 

Senator George Brandis has been calling for action to ensure Hicks does not profit from the proceeds of his ''crime''. The federal police have investigated, but the Attorney-General's office can't say who initiated the investigation. The police brief has now gone to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, where the new director, Chris Craigie, is deciding whether to prosecute.

 

If Brandis has nothing better to do with his time, hopefully the new DPP has. If he directs already scarce resources to hounding Hicks, it will once again be rolling out the big guns to humiliate an individual who has not been dealt with justly.

 

Mary Kostakidis is a journalist and member of the advisory panel to the Sydney Peace Foundation.

 

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/we-stood-up-for-hicks-because-australia-failed-to-when-it-mattered-20110524-1f2e5.html#ixzz1NOpHUUJ5