Hicks – A Sham Verdict From A Sham Trial

The rumours that were circulating yesterday that David Hicks was going to make a plea bargain have proven true.  And I can’t blame him for accepting one. 

After five years in hell, kept away from family, friends and the public – and for the last year, kept in solitary confinement, who wouldn’t break?

And after half a decade in jail without charge, the day you get into court two of your lawyers being dismissed from the case wouldn’t give you much more faith into the process which had already been re-written after the first kangaroo court system had been struck down by the US Supreme Court.

There was a protest about the Hicks trial outside DFAT this afternoon that had been called before we heard about the plea bargain.  I spent about an hour in an orange jumpsuit with a bag over my head in the beating sun, while the media took photos and footage. 

Some of that time was in a small portable cage and after that I suggested we take the show on the road – walking from the DFAT offices on Ann St down, through the mall, and across to Queens Park, where Amnesty had set up a replica of Hicks’ cell in Guantanamo Bay.  There were three of us in the orange jumpsuits “chained” together as we shuffled down the street, although wisely the first of us was unhooded.

I heard that they used some of the footage on the Channel 9 news, and the photographer from the Courier Mail was snapping away like crazy and followed us all the way to Queens Park, so I’d hope we’re in there tomorrow.

When I got back to the office in the afternoon, I discovered that two of the people who had been staffing the Amnesty stall and replica cell, were actually the aunt and uncle of my friend Vicki. Small world.

And the replica cell shows how small David’s world would have been – I lay down on the bed for a bit and my feet touched one wall while my head was up against the other. And while there were two ‘windows’ in the cell – little more than five inch strips of plexiglass – I doubt David’s would have given the fairly pleasant views of Queens Park and surroundings, as they really more to allow the guards to look in, denying him any privacy whatsoever.

There were plans for another Day of Action on Hicks and Guantanamo in a few weeks – the verdict will have thrown some doubt on whether that should proceed, but I think it needs to.  One thing I agree with Philip Ruddock on (as I quoted him in this post, is that David has a right to clear his name.  And this plea in a process that makes a mockery of the freedom we are supposedly fighting a war to bring to other people, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, or the blood it’s written in.

I still think Terry Hicks should be voted Father of the Year for his campaigning on behalf of David, and I think Major Michael Mori deserves to be Australian of the Year because I think after his incredibly impressive performance as David’s lawyer, his career in the US military is going to be pretty heavily stymied.

(I also attended the rally outside the nuclear power debate I mentioned here - Don Henry from the ACF memorably called nuclear power the “cane toad” of energy solutions – presumably meaning that it’s toxic, short-sighted and ultimately, no solution at all.)