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Guantánamo’s kangaroo court convicts Australian David Hicks
The sham trial of Australian detainee David Hicks at the Bush administration’s prison camp at Guantánamo Bay is drawing to a close. Yesterday presiding judge Colonel Ralph Kohlman formally convicted Hicks on one charge of “providing material support for terrorism”, and released the details of a plea bargain that will return Hicks to Australia to serve his jail term. The deal provides for a maximum of seven years, but all but nine months have been suspended.
The strenuous efforts to dress up proceedings cannot disguise the fact that the entire affair is a legal charade designed to justify the Bush administration’s phony “war on terror.” The plea bargain itself smacks of a dirty deal between Washington and Canberra. One of its key aims is to bolster the fortunes of the Howard government in upcoming national elections later in the year by wiping the issues of David Hicks and Guantánamo Bay off the political agenda.
Hicks is the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be charged and tried before the newly constituted US military commission. His case has been fast tracked in order to accommodate Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s calls for an early resolution. Howard, who is directly responsible for Hicks’s protracted detention, only began calling for a speedier trial when opinion polls began recording overwhelming popular opposition to the flagrant abuse of Hicks’s basic democratic and legal rights.
Major elements of the plea deal are specifically designed to muzzle Hicks in the lead up to the Australian election. He cannot speak to the media for a year and, following that period, must hand over to the Australian government any proceeds he earns from telling his story. Referring to the barbaric feudal practice used to silence opponents, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the New York Times: “It is a modern cutting out of his tongue.”
The sentence has been timed to ensure that Hicks is incarcerated throughout the 2007 election campaign. The plea bargain set a maximum sentence of seven years, not including the five years that Hicks has already spent in Guantánamo Bay. However, after the formalities of sentencing before a jury of US military officers were carried out, the judge suspended all but nine months of the sentence, meaning that Hicks will be in jail for the rest of the year. He will serve two more months in Guantánamo Bay and the remainder, under an arrangement with the Howard government, in an Australian prison.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/hick-m31.shtml
Hicks is the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be charged and tried before the newly constituted US military commission. His case has been fast tracked in order to accommodate Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s calls for an early resolution. Howard, who is directly responsible for Hicks’s protracted detention, only began calling for a speedier trial when opinion polls began recording overwhelming popular opposition to the flagrant abuse of Hicks’s basic democratic and legal rights.
Major elements of the plea deal are specifically designed to muzzle Hicks in the lead up to the Australian election. He cannot speak to the media for a year and, following that period, must hand over to the Australian government any proceeds he earns from telling his story. Referring to the barbaric feudal practice used to silence opponents, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the New York Times: “It is a modern cutting out of his tongue.”
The sentence has been timed to ensure that Hicks is incarcerated throughout the 2007 election campaign. The plea bargain set a maximum sentence of seven years, not including the five years that Hicks has already spent in Guantánamo Bay. However, after the formalities of sentencing before a jury of US military officers were carried out, the judge suspended all but nine months of the sentence, meaning that Hicks will be in jail for the rest of the year. He will serve two more months in Guantánamo Bay and the remainder, under an arrangement with the Howard government, in an Australian prison.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/hick-m31.shtml
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