Hicks Cops a Plea; Bush Cops a Victory
Freedom loving people can applaud Australian David Hicks’ guilty plea, the first time a Guantánamo Bay prisoner has admitted to supporting Al Qaeda since the flagship prison of the Rumsfeld Gulag opened more than five years ago. The plea to one charge of material support for terrorism is a victory for the Bush administration, but it carries with it a large asterisk.
This is because Hicks’ case, unlike those of the hundreds of prisoners from Muslim countries, had become a hot button, and as a consequence his lawyer was able to plea bargain with prosecutors and cop a plea to a lesser offense.
Hicks’ lengthy incarceration and questions about his treatment are contentious issues in Australia. The controversy was becoming a political liability for the Conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard, who after British PM Tony Blair has been the U.S.’s most steadfast ally in the War on Terror and the war in Iraq.
A full military commissions jury panel will meet to decide on Hicks’ sentence. Although he faces a possible life term, prosecutors have said they probably will not seek a term longer than 20 years and that term will be served in Australia.
You can be rest assured that other enemy combatants will not be cut that kind of slack.
Hicks, 31, a former kangaroo skinner, entered a plea of guilty to one specification of providing material support for terrorism and pleaded not guilty to one specification of supporting terrorist acts. Prosecutors alleged that Hicks trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden, but they were not prepared to present evidence that Hicks attempted to kill anyone.
Hicks’ father Terry says that the guilty plea was the only way he could get out of the prison:
No one’s going to help him, the Australian government couldn’t care, they don’t care. . . . It’s a way to get home, and that’s what he’s told us. He just wants to get home.
He’s had five years of absolute hell and I think anyone in that position, if they were offered anything, they would possibly take it.
More here.
8 Responses to “Hicks Cops a Plea; Bush Cops a Victory”
Guilty, innocent, it doesn’t matter once you’be been caught up in the net of Homeland Security. You are what they say you are whether you are or not. Or you spend the rest of your days in a small cell. Do they still read ‘1984′ in high school these days?
Sam:
That is the message than my Aussie friends are getting. The question of Hicks’ guilt has taken a back seat because Aussie’s just don’t like other countries messing with their mates.
It’s not that we don’t like other countries “messing with our mates”, it’s that if our leaders are waging war on a platform of spreading peace and democracy throughout the world, then why do they allow their own citizens to be held without legitimate charges by a foreign ally for 5 years? Why allow retrospective charges to be laid when they weren’t even a crime in Australia at the time they were supposed to have been committed? If other Allies in this War Without End weren’t prepared to let their own citizens go through this charade of justice (I’m looking at you, U.K.), then why was our own government content to subject it’s own citizens to this farcical process? The Australian Government did nothing to get this process active, until Hicks’ 5- year anniversary came around, then we were told that they were very cross at the US for taking so long… oh, and they told GWB that, too. I’m sure that did a hell of a lot.
If Guantanamo Bay is for “the worst of the worst”, then why were his charges reduced over the last year or so from 4 counts (including attempted murder) to the fairly weak and watery “providing material support for terrorism”? Furthermore, his plea was made before the exact wording of what he was pleading to was finalised.
The question of Hicks’ innocence or guilt has been overshadowed by the fact that there was no presumption of innocence, and that the US is so hell-bent on finding and convicting these shadowy enemies they’ve identified that there is no hope of a fair trial, in case someone like Hicks is found to have been innocent of charges laid, and losing 5 or more years of their life as well as their sanity and dignity.
I think Heller’s Catch-22 summed it up perfectly: “Catch-22 says that they have the right to do whatever you can’t stop them from doing.”
I’m not surprised at the guilty plea by David Hicks.
He has been a political football kicked from pillar to post by the federal Australian government. There are no Americans in this hellhole and British citizens were evacuated years ago at the request of Tony Blair.
The Australian federal government has only recently started pushing for this trial because the majority of Australians are disgusted with the treatment he has received and we are now in an election year.
I would point out that most Australians aren’t David Hicks supporters, but they are appalled that this man has essentially been hung out to dry by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The Australian Attorney General has conceded that they could have brought Hicks home – If they wanted to.
I find it quite amazing that that French terrorists (by order of their Prime Minister) who blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing a photographer, were proven guilty of manslaughter and received less than three years in prison.
I’m not surprised at the guilty plea by David Hicks.
He has been a political football kicked from pillar to post by the federal Australian government. There are no Americans in this hellhole and British citizens were evacuated years ago at the request of Tony Blair.
The Australian federal government has only recently started pushing for this trial because the majority of Australians are disgusted with the treatment he has received and we are now in an election year.
I would point out that most Australians aren’t David Hicks supporters, but they are appalled that this man has essentially been hung out to dry by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The Australian Attorney General has conceded that they could have brought Hicks home – If they wanted to.
I find it quite amazing that that French terrorists (by order of their Prime Minister) who blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing a photographer, were proven guilty of manslaughter and received less than three years in prison.
You’re trying to simplify Australians into a group of people who react to things simply beacuse we don’t like otehr countries messing with our mates. In doing so, you gloss over far too many points of interest in this case.
Hicks is no “mate” of mine, but this “victory” that you laud for as Bush is as empty as the US Administration policies for cleaning up the mess they’ve created with their Holy War of Terror.
Of course Hicks pled guilty. I would have pled guilty years ago if I was an innocent man in the same situation. Hicks is obviously a tougher man than me. Whether he’s guilty or not, we’ll never really know, because he never had due process.
Strange for a so-called “moderate” to advocate totalitarian means of “justice”.
Come off the grass, Hicks is no longer an Australian, he renounced his citizenship when he (by his own admitance) took up with that mob of cut-throats. As Sir Joh once said “Fly with the crows, get shot with the Crows”. The Yanks caught him, let them keep him.
Nothing like a quote from “Sir Joh” to justify totalitarian methods of justice. Gee, I’m convinced!
Even in Queensland, Grass-person, it’s illegal to shoot crows.