Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin
writes:


The facts regarding David Hicks can be summarised simply, and Gerard Henderson in the SMH this week misrepresented those facts and distracted us with red herrings.

As an Australian citizen abroad, Hicks is entitled to effective Australian Government consular protection when arrested and charged with serious crimes by a foreign government. For the past four years he has not had this protection. To surrender his final fate to a military “court” where the US military is at once plaintiff, jailer, evidence-gatherer, prosecutor, judge and jury cannot give him a fair trial. At the very least, he should be tried by a US civil court (as was US citizen John Walker Lindh). Or he should be returned for trial in Australia as other non-US Guantanamo inmates (e.g., British, French prisoners) are being repatriated to face judicial process in their own countries.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia, based on reputable mainstream media sources, says Hicks was captured in Kandahar in the closing days of the civil war between the then Taliban government of Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance insurgency supported by US special forces and air power. The insurgency prevailed and the Taliban government, for which Hicks was fighting, fell. Hicks was captured by Northern Alliance troops. He can fairly claim that at the time of capture he was under arms as a foreign volunteer for a sovereign government which he supported. In what ways does this differ from the foreign volunteers who fought for the losing Republican government in the Spanish Civil War against the successful Francoist insurgency?

Yes, we do not like the Taliban government, and we know the US decided to unseat it for giving refuge to Al Qaeda, but those facts of themselves do not make Hicks an Al Qaeda fighter. The US military allegations cited by Henderson that he was trained by Al Qaeda as an international terrorist are just that – unproven allegations. They need to be tested in a real court under proper rules of evidence, not by a military Star Chamber.

As for Hicks’ record of fighting for the Kosovar Liberation Army, were not the KLA defending the Kosovar people (Muslims) against genocidal acts and mass ethnic cleansing by militarily dominant and brutal Serb forces? Weren’t a million Kosovars forced to flee their ravaged villages into Albania? Wasn’t the KLA “on our side” at the time?

Henderson condemns Hicks’ political and religious views as privately communicated by letter to his father. Isn’t Henderson here accusing Hicks of Thoughtcrimes (cf. “1984”)? Hicks was not on a public platform; he was trying to explain his ideas to his close family. However much many of us dislike such ideas, we must surely in a democracy defend his right to have them?

In recent days, many eminent Western lawyers, Australian and international, have made some of the above points, in particular as to manifest inadequacy of the legal process – even including the ADF’s senior military counsel, Captain Paul Willee. Such unanimity among legal professionals must be given due weight. I give no weight to Henderson’s piece, which is nothing more than poorly constructed propaganda in defence of the indefensible.

The truth is that Howard has painted himself into a corner on Hicks. Having knuckled under to everything the US said and did, he cannot now protest without the risk of generating doubts in the Bush circle as to his loyalty under pressure. Hicks is the victim of that, and this is injustice. Australians are right to protest.

Read more on Wikipedia here and here.