Johnnee is sorry he's missed you by-that-much with all his potshots, while making sure you stayed in the Guano line-of-sight for five years... and you're still there, mentally going downhill despite the denials of his mournful side-kicks — mournful because there is no mourning yet to be done, hypocritically...

Johnnee's sorry you are not hanging yet, so he could pronounce with the gravitas of a soft-silken black top-hat that "justice wuz done", like he did when S'dam was hung with the justice and decorum usually reserved for sacs of potatoes.

A a crocodile-teared lawyer, he tells an audience of disbelieving voters that "justice delayed is justice denied", while still holding the gun — probably now at the head of your lawyer for having had the gall to request that justice be done, under the proper process of law.

I would not be surprised if Johnnee-Yankee — the Most UnAustralian "undertaker" — secretly gave the US milit'ry, the ammos to waste him.

...And the way he says: "We are very angry it's taken so long, and I share the view of millions of Australians that justice delayed is justice denied," from the quivering lying lips that tell "never ever" when he means "for-sure", one wonders if he's talking about you or your lawyer, Mori...

If he had one ounce of decency left in his body, he should used it to let you out of that hell-hole and help you become a decent citizen. You wouldn't have to vote for him though. 

Hicks's lawyer won't face charges: US prosecutor

The US military lawyer leading the prosecution of David Hicks has denied reports he is moving to charge the South Australian detainee's defence counsel, Major Michael Mori.

Major Mori says Colonel Moe Davis has threatened to charge him for making contemptuous remarks about US President George Bush and other government officials.

Colonel Davis has told ABC's Newsradio that he criticised Major Mori while talking to a journalist last week and the suggestion that he might charge him could have been based on those criticisms.

"He mentioned that Major Mori was in Australia and causing quite a stir and a lot of uproar for the Howard administration, which led me to comment that I wouldn't let the prosecutors in my office to engage in similar conduct," he said.

"It was extrapolated from there that charges against him were imminent.

"I can assure you, I've never heard anyone, at any time, anywhere, indicate any investigation, discipline or trial for Major Mori."

from Crikey …..

Hicks’s torture casts long shadow

Michael Otterman, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, writes:

The same day the US formally charged David Hicks with the retroactive "providing material support for terrorism" offence, the Sydney Morning Herald published the most detailed account of Hicks's torture yet. It gives a very clear view into methods used by the US government to elicit "dependence and trust".

Hicks’s time in detention has been marked with "silent, disoriented dread". At Guantanamo’s Camp X Ray, Hicks was woken up every hour by guards. He was not permitted to speak to any human being except his interrogators. Once a week he was allowed 15 minutes of exercise. In his cell, Hicks was allowed to assume only one of two physical positions: sitting while looking straight down or supine looking up. Hicks said he was forced to "say anything" to avoid further punishment.

In Camp Delta, "comfort items" like toilet paper and clean drinking water were doled out to detainees who cooperated with interrogators. Korans, Hicks alleged, were frequently kicked or dropped in the toilet. At one stage, he was shown a photograph of a battered Mamdouh Habib, then held in an underground Cairo prison. He was told that if he didn’t confess to crimes against the United States he too would be "sent to Egypt" for brutal torture.

After 15 months of psychological torture, Hicks signed the following statement penned by his interrogators: "I knew after six months that I was receiving training from al-Qaeda, who had declared war on numerous countries and peoples." After confessing, Hicks was placed in solitary confinement for 244 days, then later moved to Camp Six – a facility that has been described as a "dungeon above the ground".

Given the rules governing US military tribunals, Hicks will likely be convicted. Although his confession was drawn by coercive means at Guantanamo, the commissions permit coerced statements. Evidence "in which the degree of coercion is disputed", drawn before 30 December 2005, is permitted provided it possess "sufficient probative value". Given all evidence is, by definition, probative, all coerced evidence will be allowed.

This is a situation that some in US intelligence circles have privately wished for since the the early Cold War period. For instance, in 1958 the CIA’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, printed an article by an agent under the pseudonym Don Compos titled, "The Interrogation of Suspects Under Arrest".

The article begins with ominous advice: "The recalcitrant subject of an intelligence interrogation must be 'broken' but broken for use like a riding horse, not smashed in the search for a single golden egg." Citing methods used in Soviet and Chinese prisons, the article suggested interrogators "control the psychological factors in every aspect of the subject’s life from the earliest possible stage". Methods like sensory deprivation and constantly changing cell conditions were central to ensuring "a continuing flow of information". He adds: "Everything possible must be done to impress upon the subject the unassailable superiority of those in whose hands he finds himself and therefore the futility of his position".

The Compos article includes a sober observation. A coercive intelligence interrogation is "usually incompatible with one intended to produce legal evidence for a court conviction, since statements by the accused may be barred as court evidence on the ground that they were made under duress, during prolonged detention without charge, or in some other violation of legal procedure."

50 years later, the US created a system where evidence drawn from coercive methods can be used in court. David Hicks – the first detainee to be charged – will be the first victim of this injustice.

Michael Otterman is the author of American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. His website is www.americantorture.com

From the ABC

Terry Hicks denies calling son 'a terrorist'

The US chief prosecutor in Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks's case says there is evidence his father referred to his son as a terrorist in an interview.

It has been reported that Terry Hicks may be called as a prosecution witness at his son's looming military trial.

But Mr Hicks says he never referred to his son as a terrorist and he has not been approached to testify.

"I think what is happening here is we're going through a discrediting exercise that's coming through the US," he said.

"They've done it with Major [Michael] Mori [Hicks's defence lawyer] the last few days on a few comments that he's made.

"Now all of a sudden that's failed - let's try and jump on Terry Hicks's neck."

 

From the ABC

"I can tell you that the first court appearance of Mr Hicks in relation to the new charge will be on the 20th of March," he said.

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Gus: in relation to the "new" charge? Is this all they could come against Hicksd after 5 years of detention, mental torture et al? Whot a crock!

 

From Al Jazeera

Secretive US hearings raise concern          
Fourteen Guantanamo Bay prison detainees are due to face their first hearings before US military panels, without legal representation and with reporters barred from the proceedings.

From the SMH

1.8m x 2.4m: living like Hicks
Jano Gibson
March 19, 2007 - 3:27PM

A life-sized replica of David Hicks's Guantanamo Bay cell has gone on display in the middle of Sydney's CBD in an effort to show people what life's like for the Australian terror suspect.

Passers-by who entered the cramped, florescent-lit, white-walled structure, which was set up in Martin Place today by human rights organisation Amnesty International, described the experience as traumatising.

From the ABC

Archbishop writes to PM about Hicks

Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Dr Philip Freier has written to the Prime Minister expressing his concerns about the situation David Hicks is in.

Earlier today David Hicks's father, Terry, flew out of Australia headed for Cuba for his son's arraignment on charges of assisting terrorists.

Hicks has been held in detention at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years after being captured in Afghanistan.

Dr Freier says there are several aspects of the Hicks case which are unacceptable.

"American citizens who have their rights protected by the US Constitution aren't subject to military commissions and I think that's not a good situation, where something that's not good enough for an American is something that an Australian is being examined by," he said.

Dr Freier says the admission of evidence through coercion also has him worried.

"Coercion, as I understand it, is defined as up to and including the point of organ failure," he said.

"At that point it becomes torture, but that seems to me to be an unacceptable thing that those kinds of admissions or information obtained through those means are acceptable in a court that David Hicks is being tried through."

Meanwhile a US judge has refused to halt Hicks's military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

The District Court has ruled that it has no jurisdiction in the case of Hicks, who is to be arraigned next week.

The US Congress passed a law last year stripping courts of all jurisdiction to hear challenges from foreign citizens held outside the United States as "enemy combatants".

A challenge to that law is soon to be decided by the Supreme Court, and Hicks's lawyers had asked that his Guantanamo tribunal be delayed until that case was settled.

 

Cheney, Howard did deal on Hicks release: report

US Vice-President Dick Cheney agreed to a deal with Prime Minister John Howard to release former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, a US media report says.

The report, published in Harper's magazine, cites an unnamed US military officer saying that one of its staffers was present when Mr Cheney interfered directly to get Hicks's plea bargain deal.

"He [Mr Cheney] did it, apparently, as part of a deal cut with [Australian Prime Minister] Howard," the unnamed source is quoted as saying.

"I kept thinking: this is the sort of thing that used to go on behind the Iron Curtain, not in America.

"And then it struck me how much this entire process had disintegrated into a political charade. It's demoralising for all of us."

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Gus: was the deal cut either to "help" Hicks out of Guano bay or to relieve John Howard's growing public embarrassment at himself and his dancing cronies — especially Downer and Ruddock — heaping tons of guilty bricks on Hicks shoulders, for five long years?.... But Howard denied having "done a deal..."

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"And the suggestion from (Greens leader) Senator Brown, that it has something to do with the Australian elections, is absurd," Mr Howard said at the time.

When Major Michael Mori of the US Marines was given the job of defending Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks it looked as though his legal career was on shaky ground, especially when he started criticising the US military commissions.

But times have changed. David Hicks lives in Australia, the Obama administration wants to shut Guantanamo Bay, and Michael Mori has been promoted.

Major Mori, in the early days at least, had little to no experience in international law.

With the help of civilian lawyers in Australia and the US, in 2007 he eventually secured a deal for David Hicks, whereby Hicks would plead guilty to an amended charge to secure his release.

By then, Major Mori had become a vocal critic of the military commission process. His client returned to Australia after five years in Guantanamo Bay and Major Mori was sent to Iraq.

"I had been working at the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in the Staff Judge Advocates office and had gone to Iraq for a short tour there ... working as a prosecutor," he said.

After 18 years in the Marines and after being knocked back for a promotion, he was looking to retire from the military.

But now he has been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and made a senior military judge.