Of what is David Hicks guilty?

David Hicks is to be liberated from Guantanamo after five years of appalling imprisonment and torture, and a typical USA show trial. How appropriate that the first Guantanamo kangaroo court should convict an Australian citizen.

Now, to please the Yanks and Bush's "Deputy Sheriff", Australian Prime Minister John Howard, he is to be incarcerated in a South Australian prison. Under what Australian law is this to happen? What Australian law has he broken? What South Australian law has he broken?

If he was captured as an enemy combatant, what is the precedent to lock him up in an Australian prison? After WWII did we keep German and Japanese soldiers in prison, uncharged and beaten, for five years? Of course not. We sent them home so that we could do business with them. So we could make money from them.

David Hicks is now subject to a gag order. The USA allows people freedom of speech -- even monsters like Charles Manson speak to the press, as this Google Video/Youtube search shows. Yet the USA-Australia deal requires Hicks not to talk to the media until after the federal election. This would be unconstitutional in the real United States of America, although its military commissions seem strangely immune from such niceties.

I, for one, can't wait to hear David speak out. I hope he is paid a fortune by Sixty Minutes to do so.

The David Hicks issue is not over, not by a long chalk. Free David Hicks.

A trial that was uncomfortably close to Stalinist theatre

Tagged: david+hicks, guantanamo, usa, australia, law, legal, civil+rights, human+rights