Mel Hughes, Adelaide
Prime Minister John Howard "has a heart of stone", Terry Hicks, father of David Hicks, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly on July 15, the day international protests were held against the Australian citizen's continued detention at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Howard "doesn't want to bring David home because he knows he'd have to be released", said his father.
David Hicks has been held by the US military for more than four years without trial as an "enemy combatant" after being
detained by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan in late 2001 and then sold to the US military.
Howard has publicly acknowledged that at the time Hicks was detained he had not broken any Australian law and therefore cannot be charged and tried in Australia. The government has done nothing to seek his release or to protect Hicks' legal rights.
The 31-year-old Australian was charged with attempted murder, aiding the enemy and conspiracy in August 2004 by the US military, under a special military commission tribunal system set up by US President George Bush. Despite more than two years of brutal physical and psychological pressure, Hicks pleaded not guilty to these frame-up charges.
Bush has faced criticism at home and abroad for the indefinite detention of detainees at its Guantanamo Bay prison. In late June, however, the US Supreme Court ruled that his military commission process violated both US and international law, including the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
Howard, who had previously declared his support for Bush's "kangaroo court" military commission process, immediately reacted to the US Supreme Court's ruling by urging Bush not to release Hicks and instead to create a new mechanism to try him.
Terry Hicks told GLW that the Guantanamo Bay prison authorities "have shut everyone's mail off since the suicides" of three detainees on June 30 (described by Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer as a "PR stunt").
"The temperature is often turned up, and sometimes David is sleeping on nothing but an inch-thick mattress", his father remarked, when asked about his son's prison conditions. "I spoke with him a fortnight ago, and psychologically he's not coping, especially since the suicides, he's not been treated well."
Terry Hicks also described the one face-to-face encounter he had two years ago with his son, who was "shackled to the floor" throughout the duration of the visit. "It's alright for his parents to see him that way, but when he was led into court before the media he wasn't even handcuffed. They don't want people to know what's really going on."
Terry Hicks is very angry at the Australian government's failure to ensure his son's legal rights are respected.
"There is no evidence to support Howard's assertion that David's admitted to training with al Qaeda, and it was 19 months before he even got to see Major [Michael] Mori", his US military lawyer. "In that time, David was interrogated at will in a six-by-eight-foot cell, with no contact with the outside world, and no counsel. It doesn't matter what David's done or hasn't done — as a prisoner, he has fundamental rights that are being ignored."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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