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Guantanamo: A kangaroo tribunal
The fatal flaw of the White House's system of military tribunals is that few outside the Bush administration see them as anything like fair.
And nothing about the outcome of the first case to be adjudicated by a tribunal will change that. After five years in U.S. custody, 31-year-old Australian David Hicks copped to a single plea of material support of a terrorist organization.
He did so, his father and lawyers say, simply to get out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and go home to Australia, where he is to serve his sentence, which likely won't be much.
The tribunal process has succeeded in making Hicks, a directionless one-time kangaroo skinner, into something of a local hero.
A senator who represents Hicks' state in Australia told the New York Times he would return "as a guilty man who has not had a fair trial. The Australian public will see through this process."
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http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070329/EDIT/703290310/1003
He did so, his father and lawyers say, simply to get out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and go home to Australia, where he is to serve his sentence, which likely won't be much.
The tribunal process has succeeded in making Hicks, a directionless one-time kangaroo skinner, into something of a local hero.
A senator who represents Hicks' state in Australia told the New York Times he would return "as a guilty man who has not had a fair trial. The Australian public will see through this process."
More
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070329/EDIT/703290310/1003
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Pens scribbled furiously as footage showed Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer briefing lawmakers on Hicks' confession, which had been hammered out Monday between the U.S. military prosecutors and defense lawyers here at Guantanamo Bay.
Details of Hicks' plea bargain were news to the journalists who had made their way to this U.S. Navy base to cover the first American military prosecution of a war crimes suspect in 60 years.
The correspondents had to rely on media back home to learn that Hicks would serve just one more year in prison once he is transferred to Australian custody as part of his guilty plea on a single charge of providing material support to a terrorist group.
There's a veritable news blackout on the deliberations here, making it difficult for all media to gather information. But information about Hicks' case has circled the globe via the time-honored system of diplomatic dispatches to officials in the Australian capital, Canberra, who then provide details to reporters there.
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