Vote Michael Mori for Supreme Deity

Major Michael Mori is not only a dedicated legal defender of Australian Guantanamo victim David Hicks, he is also obviously a very brave man of integrity.

His vocal support for Hicks is all the more remarkable when one remembers that he is the US military-appointed lawyer for this Australian man who has been held for years without trial in cruel and unusual conditions by the Bush regime. Mori seems fearless of his employers.

This week he wrote an important document about his client, at GetUp, the excellent Australian issues-based website:

"Unfortunately, politics have replaced justice in the case of David Hicks.

"David has been detained for four and a half years without trial, and has been in isolation for the past four months. He sits in a concrete room for 23 hours a day. He is allowed one book per week and one hour outside his cell for exercise in what best could be described as a large dog kennel, and to shower.

"I will visit him shortly to see if there is any improvement in his living conditions since the recent announcement that part of the Geneva Conventions will apply to David. We have tried in the past to get David working on his high school certificate which is something that David has put his heart into. The conditions that he is kept in make this difficult to accomplish.

"The four and half year delay, so far, in bringing David to trial is due to the fact that David did not violate any international law so the US had to make up charges and an unfair system that would rubber stamp the charges without question ...

"The recent ruling by the US Supreme Court finding military commissions illegal vindicates everything the legal experts in Australia have been saying for the past four years. It highlights the fact that the Australian government must have blindly followed the US Department of Defense without receiving any internal advice on the legality of the commission and chose to ignore advice that the commissions were illegal such as Lex Lasry's report for the Law Council of Australia in 2004 ...

"It may take another year before David sees the inside of a courtroom. This will be five and half years from the start of David's detention in Guantanamo.

"Clearly, a case of justice delayed is justice denied."
Source

Fair Go for David (Seeks to publicise human rights concerns of Hicks' detainment. Collection of media references and commentary.)
ForeignPrisoners.com (Seeks to publicise human rights concerns of detained persons)
The President Versus David Hicks (Website of documentary film about Hicks' case)


Tagged: david+hicks, usa, torture, guantanamo, human+rights, law, legal, civil+rights, army, military, war+on+terror