Asia-Pacific News
NEWS ANALYSIS: Hicks fix a convenient out for Howard and Bush
By Sid Astbury Mar 27, 2007, 7:39 GMT
Sydney - Anti-war protesters in orange jump suits marching in Brisbane's city centre Tuesday were stunned by the news of David Hicks' guilty plea to a charge of supporting terrorism at a US war crimes' tribunal at the Guantanamo military base.
'We were actually saying the military trial is unfair, but we didn't know he was going to strike a plea bargain,' demonstrator and Stop the War Collective spokesman Robert Nicholas said. 'We're clearly saying that still, but we understand why he would want to plead guilty and get out of Guantanamo Bay.'
There was a palpable air of disappointment among those who had campaigned to bring Hicks home at his decision to go ahead and achieve that outcome himself, by admitting to helping the Taliban in Afghanistan.
A promise President George Bush gave Prime Minister John Howard means the Muslim convert would serve any extra jail time in Australia. With five years already served, he could be back in his Adelaide hometown within the week.
Green Party leader Bob Brown was also glum at the surprise capitulation.
'This is a low day in Australian legal history,' Brown said. 'Hicks' guilt will always be in doubt; the Howard government's guilt in this affair will never be in doubt.'
Relief and a barely concealed air of vindication showed among Howard's ministers. 'I'm pleased for everybody's sake that this saga has come to a conclusion,' said a beaming Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
Howard, politic as ever, was careful to hide any satisfaction at the surprise outcome. 'It's always been our view that Hicks should face justice, but we've been very concerned about the time that it's taken,' the prime minister told parliament.
With a general election possibly only eight months away, and the Labor Party streaking ahead in the opinion polls, Howard had pulled out all the stops to get the former kangaroo skinner out of Guantanamo. He brought the matter up with Bush in a phone call last month and he set a deadline of mid-March for legal proceedings to begin.
Five years ago, few cared about the 31-year-old Hicks. His claim that he was in Afghanistan immersing himself in his religious studies impressed no one.
But being held without trial for so long began to rankle with Australians. The tide turned and the sorry fate of Hicks - in a tiny cell for 22 hours a day - became a cause that many embraced.
Bush promised Howard that Hicks would be among the first before a military tribunal. Indeed, he was the first and his guilty plea came the same day as his arraignment.
The Bush administration needed the sniff of victory in its legal pursuit of suspected terrorists. The guilty plea from Hicks showed the military commission could be made to work - and held out the prospect that Guantanamo could be emptied.
The guilty plea and Hicks' impending return to Australia excised the one-time rodeo rider from the coming election campaign. Labor leader Kevin Rudd had promised to bring him home regardless.
Rudd had branded the military tribunal an unacceptable jurisdiction for an Australian citizen.
'I'm no defender of Mr Hicks, of what he's done or alleged to have done,' Rudd said. 'At the same time I defend the legal rights and human rights of every Australian citizen and he will not be receiving a fair trial through this US military commission.'
Labor has suddenly lost an issue to campaign on, and Howard's ruling coalition is thankful that a sticky issue is off the agenda.
Hicks' supporters claim he only pleaded guilty to escape the conditions of the Guantanamo military prison. But the fact remains that he accepted guilt.
Justice Minister David Johnston noted with satisfaction that pleading guilty was irrevocable and incontrovertible.
'When you plead guilty - as an old courtroom sparrer like myself knows - when you plead guilty you put yourself in the dock and you don't go home that night,' he commented.
Having Hicks accept guilt, engineering his day in court, doesn't absolve the Howard government from the dishonour of allowing a citizen to languish without trial for five years. But it does show Howard as having the courage of his convictions.
He was resolute, didn't bow to public opinion and bring Hicks home. Most importantly for Howard, who at 67 is trying for a fifth term in office, the guilty plea means Hicks will be back in Australia for a likely election in November.
By then, protesters in orange suits will be a thing of the past.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
David Hicks did NOT get a fair trial , All true blue aussies demand a fair go for ALL
David Hicks will be a national Hero that rivals Ned Kelly .
No American tourist will EVER visit Australia ever again ,without being called to account for the 5 years of ABUSE of David Hicks
Aussies demand a fair go
David Hicks was forced to plead guilty , and all true aussies will see him as a victim of American torture chambers and a national hero
No America visitor to Australia will ever feel like returning , when they are asked why they tortured an innocent man fot 5 years
kanga
Kanga,
Don't tar all us Yanks with the same brush! Lots of us dislike Bush and what he's done even more than you do. You're right, everyone deserves a fair go, and Bushie is way out of control.
Yank
If he returns to Australia it will be up to the Prime minister to give him a pardon.
Most probably when there is a change in government. Otherwise there will be protests everyday.
Its sad how the USA has lost its fair play and justice.
Hicks = Dumbass
or will he write a book and get rich?
Should have locked him up and thrown away the key, to support Hicks means supporting terrorists if you choose to support terrorists as he did in the name of religeon then you get treated as a terrorist. he was lucky not to be found dead in a ditch.
For me it was never about Hick's guilt.
It's about flagrant abuse of human rights and international law!
And by two governments of nations who claim to be champions of those rights and laws.
What I find especially worriesome, as a student of history, are the alarming similarities between our situation now and the experience of Germany in the early 1930's.
Now is not the time to be complacent!
i would er're on the side caution . 5 years in quantanimo ? i'd give im another 35 ! or better yet , 9 grams in the back of the head .
i am troubled by some of the comments on american visitors to AUS. i once thought to leave the US and go to AUS because i was ashamed of the US war and the treatment of human beings by the US. am i to be judged for what the bush administration has done... is it not the same ideal of injustice perpetrated against Hicks that you say you are against that you would perpetrate against visitors to AUS?
are we blinded by our hatred, or does our hatred make us blind...
jm
When the outcome only serves in the interests of justice..... the suspect is innocent. When will the world including Australia learn that it isn't only the US/UK who have terrorists living in their society.
you'll change your bleedin heart lookout when the crazies come and blow up stuff in your country.
no one in prison is ever guilty ... ask them. God bless the USA
not really anzac: other countries havnt provoked people to extreme acts of violence
I haven't a lick of sympathy for Hicks, but Bush needed this to make his point. Now he can go back to Oz, but not as a national hero. He's a ringmeat and should have been shot 5 years ago.I wish the Bush admistration would go with him. GOOD RIDDANCE
So, take him back 'home' so he can plot another mass-murder of your citizens and make a heroe out of him. You probably feel isolated from all this 'down-under' but with Indonesia so close, prepare for attacks as they need your continent to breed on and subjugate you. Regardless of what you think and do, even with Bush out of office, the war will continue until we stop coddling trash like Hicks. He is not an Aussie, he's a Traitor and should never be released.
The comments in support of Mr. Hicks are disgusting. A real hero? The man who admitted that he went to Central Asia to kill infidels? A man who changed his name from 'David Hicks' and only returned to using it as a public relations ploy? What a sad excuse Mr. Hicks and his supporters are for human beings.
The legal fictions invented by Kevin Rudd, Bob Brown, and all the other opponents of the military trials are also disgusting. Never before have war criminals been entitled to civilian trials, but of course they should be given more rights than a legal soldier captured during war because otherwise you anti-American pigs wouldn't be able to condemn America and Howard.
Hicks-hating Aussies are total cowards. Adelaide is a yuppy town with no place for Muslims. He doesn't belong there any more than a Pakistani does. If he's to be sent back after everything he's seen and done, watch what happens. You can blame Howard and the Guantanamo guys for just not knowing what to do for so long. And they Still don't.
Hicks woulda been like the lowest ranking private any terrorist network could have, a janitor for them. A Jester. Background Man like Jim Carrey on Living Colour if Afghanistan wouldn't have been invaded in the first place. Now the terrorists know how the west treats their kids. NICE one, 'Terry' Hicks. Jam your thumb up any crocodiles' buttholes lately?
If this isn't one more huge mistake of a distraction then I don't know what is.
Maybe, even probably, Hicks is guilty as hell of terrorist acts. But when it's an individual against all the might and resources of a national government -- especially one as powerful as the US government (not to mention one as self-righteous as the current administration) -- then fair's fair. Either the government should declare people like Hicks prisoners of war and follow the rules that apply there, or make its case in court and see if will stick.
Either way, you don't throw people like Hicks in some secret jail somewhere, refuse to say whether you've got them or not, and then when you finally admit you've got them continue to keep them isolated in some island prison for as long as you please because you think you can operate outside the law that way. If Hicks's case is as open and shut as all that, then the Bush administration should have made its case long ago. If Bush had decided to call him a prisoner of war, well that would have been just some really bad luck for Hicks. For political reasons Bush decided to do it differently, so some different rules have to apply.
Whatever those rules ought to be, just grabbing people because the circumstances look bad, throwing them in jail, and throwing away the key is not okay. If they're not POWs, then they should have reasonable access to justice.
Fine, the case against David Hicks looks pretty good. So why was it such a problem allowing him a prompt hearing? And, suppose he really were nothing more than one really stupid bloke who posed for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation photo with a bunch of militants he stumbled across at the wrong place and the wrong time? What if it had been you? Would you rather rot in jail or have a chance to explain it all?
True, giving people a chance to explain and requiring a government to prove its case means that sometimes guilty people get off, and sometimes people get hurt later because of it. But, most western societies have decided that risk is preferable to the risk of innocent people sitting in jail (or getting executed) for things they didn't do. Freedom is not easy. Sometimes it's damn hard.
As far as this Yank is concerned, any Aussie who believes in a fair shake is welcome in the U.S. We could use more people like you.
oh boy, another hero like ned kelly i don,t think so, did we force him to go and join the taliban no he wanted to play war now he knows all about it. he made his own bed so let him sleep in it.
page: 1
Poor HicksMar 27th, 2007 - 08:17:52
I hope nobody will take this guilty plea as an acknowledgment of real guilt. Mr Hicks is in a vicious trap, where his only hope for escape is to act this way, and be home as soon as he can. If he had still denied his so-called responsability, he would have rot for years in Gitmo.
May his fellow aussies welcome him as the real hero he is.
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