Australian Guantanamo Bay Detainee Finally Charged

After two years being held without charge, contrary to the Geneva conventions and kept in demeaning and inhumane conditions and allegedly subjected to torture, Australian David Hicks has finally been charged. The U.S. military press release is here.

After two years being held without charge, contrary to the Geneva conventions and kept in demeaning and inhumane conditions and allegedly subjected to torture, Australian David Hicks has finally been charged. The U.S. military press release is here.

Let me summarise, he was found with a gun and a couple of grenades in the company of many other Taliban foot-soldiers and is assumed to be thinking bad things against America. What is off the agenda is to consider him a mercenary no different from a member of the French Foreign Legion training in techniques no different to the Australian Special Air Services. In other words, in front of a rational civilian judge, his behaviour is no different from that of a soldier serving in support of the Afghan government (then the Taliban, recognised by and liasing with the Bush administration). This is not to support the man’s behaviour, as I have argued, he should be charged as a mercenary and serve a prison sentence in Australia for crimes against international law. However, these charges are nothing more than political grand-standing and for not thinking the way the Bush administration does.

Given international observers will not be allowed to attend, and Stephen Kenny, Hicks Australian counsel is limited in what he can disclose and that Hicks U.S. military lawyer has stated the trial will be unfair it remains to be seen what “justice” will be handed out.

For a U.S. public blinded by “Perry Como” and “Law & Order”, it probably won’t make the corporate news given the disgusting corporate media masturbation over a senile terrorist that finally died without ever standing trial for his terror campaigns against El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, Iran and Iraq.