Dale Mills
The Australian government is coming under increasing domestic and international pressure to intervene in the imprisonment of David Hicks at the United States' military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Hicks has now been held there for four and a half years.
Long held without charge, Hicks has now been formally accused of "conspiracy to commit war crimes", "attempted murder" and "aiding the enemy". Unlike normal criminal charges, no details have been released so it is not clear what "war crimes" he is being charged with, how he was aiding an enemy or who he attempted to murder.
Although some Guantanamo prisoners have been released without charge and repatriated to their home countries, about 660 men are still imprisoned in the facility, and there appears to have been a recent sharp escalation in disturbances there.
On May 18, two men attempted suicide by overdosing on stockpiled medication. This took to 25 the number of prisoners who have attempted suicide.
On May 20, riots broke out, followed by more men joining the hunger strike started by several prisoners in August. By May 30, 75 men were on hunger strike. The original hunger strikers are being force-fed using a naso-gastric tube.
The Australian government's refusal to make representations for the Hicks' return to Australia prompted Amnesty International to call on the UK government to grant Hicks UK citizenship (his mother is a UK citizen).
The UK government argues that Guantanamo Bay should be closed immediately and has succeeded in gaining the release of all UK citizens held there. However, it recently appealed, unsuccessfully, against a ruling that granted Hicks UK citizenship. Amnesty International's Irene Khan commented: "We think that instead of challenging David Hicks' entitlement to British citizenship, the British government should seek either his prosecution under fair trial standards or his release."
PM John Howard has blamed Hicks for his continued detention, saying that he authored his own misfortune when he challenged the legality of the US military commissions in the US courts. Hicks is arguing that he is, under the US Constitution, entitled to a trial, rather than being judged by a military commission, which falls far short of traditional notions of due process.
Australian Law Council president John North says that Hicks was simply exploring all avenues open to him. "It is perfectly understandable that Hicks sought access to the US court system as an alternative to a military commission", he said. "It has been the US authorities, under no pressure from Australian authorities, who have presided over the drawn-out process designed to avoid real judicial scrutiny of the disgrace that is Guantanamo Bay."
The US government's recent "opening up" of the prison camp to outside scrutiny, intended to reduce criticism of it, has already backfired. A delegation of European MPs and US representatives who visited Guantanamo Bay on May 22 were forbidden from speaking with detainees, which they later said rendered their visit practically useless.
Meanwhile, the war on terror abroad means that civil liberties diminish at home. According to a May 24 AFP report, prominent lawyer Lex Lasry QC, in a speech to the Melbourne University Law School, said that the National Security Information Act 2004 made it harder to get a fair trial by allowing the government to withhold information from the defence for "national security" reasons. He pointed out that the withholding of evidence cannot be challenged in any court.
The removal of judicial scrutiny is a more general feature of the so-called war on terror. Guantanamo is subject to neither Cuban nor US law, although this is now being challenged in the US courts. As High Court Justice Michael Kirby put it at a May 22 meeting at Sydney University, Guantanamo is like a legal "black hole".
From Green Left Weekly, June 7, 2006.
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