“The findings of guilty are set aside and dismissed and appellant’s sentence is vacated.”
With this statement on February 18 the United States Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR), found David Hicks innocent of a previous guilty plea of providing military support to terrorism.
Speaking to Green Left Weekly, Hicks said: “I am not jumping up and down for joy. I am very tired by it all. Then there are the government’s and media’s attitude to it all. I am quite fed up with it all.”
Hicks’ frustration is directed against Tony Abbott and former Prime Minister John Howard. “They still back what they did,” he said.
“They said they had to do what was in the best interests of the country, for the nation’s safety, which is ridiculous and bullshit.”
On hearing the result, Abbot said: “He [Hicks] was up to no good on his own admission … I am not in the business of apologising for the actions that Australian governments take to protect our country”. Howard said Hicks was someone who “revelled in Jihad”.
Abbott and Howard are using information contained in the “Published Opinion of the CMCR Statement of Facts”, which among other claims, says that in January 2001 Hicks travelled to Afghanistan to attend al Qaeda camps to receive “guerilla warfare training” and that he met Osama Bin Laden.
The problem with the Statement of Facts is that they are not the facts. Hicks took the Alford Plea to the charge of providing military support for terrorism. This means there is an acceptance of guilt but a protestation of innocence.
Hicks’ wife, Dr Aloysia Brooks, a human rights campaigner, said “The Statement of Facts was made up by the US government, by prosecutors. It actually has nothing to do with anything David has said or omissions or confessions. He was told that if he didn’t sign it, he wouldn’t be going back to Australia, that he would rot in Guantanamo and probably die there.
“He was suicidal at the time, he had been there five and a half years, and his military lawyer at the time passed on a message from John Howard’s office basically saying, ‘You will never come back to Australia an innocent man. You have to plead guilty to something.’”
Hicks’ problem with the media, he says, is that in the seven years he has been free, they continue to fixate on what he was doing in Afghanistan. Different media outlets continually tell him he has to answer this, before they will move on to other questions, such as his treatment at the hands of the US and Australia’s complicity in it.
Hicks spent five and a half years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, after being sold by the Northern Alliance to the US military in Afghanistan in December 2001. While in US custody he was subject to an array of torture techniques, including, beatings, his right hand being fractured, being deprived of sleep through constant noise and lighting, being threatened with rape and torture, being isolated and put in solitary confinement, being shackled and put in stress positions.
He still suffers from his injuries, reeling off the problems: left knee, right elbow, wrists.
“The big one is my back. It is permanently damaged and there is not much I can do about that. I have injections about once a year on average … but the effect of the injections only lasts about three months and then the pain comes back.
“I couldn’t brush my teeth for all those years, I have lost three teeth altogether, and I’ve more I’ll have to get pulled out. I get them pulled out because it is the cheapest option.”
The physical injuries are a pressing concern for him, as they are affecting his ability to work. He estimates he has only five more years of work in him. He tries to put aside the psychological damage inflicted by the torture “because I am too fixated on the physical”.
Despite the pain he is still in he doesn’t want compensation, or an apology, but “I would like to have my medical expenses covered for the injuries sustained in Guantanamo being tortured.”
David Hicks and his father Terry Hicks.
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