Dropped Hicks case 'hides human rights issues'

30 Jul 2012, 3:49 pm   -   Source: Rhiannon Elston, SBS
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A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard says a dropped court case against David Hicks was a missed opportunity to place on record details of injustice that occurred at the US facility.

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A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard says a dropped court case against David Hicks was a missed opportunity to place on record details of injustice that occurred at the US facility.

Brandon Neely was due to travel from the US to Australia this month to testify in a legal battle brought against David Hicks by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

The DPP planned to argue the profits of David Hicks’ memoir ‘Guantanamo: My Journey’ were the proceeds of crime. After a decision was made to discontinue legal proceedings, Mr Neely decided to publish his four-page affidavit on his Twitter account. (Click here to read the document: Page 1, page 2, page 3 and page 4). 

He says he wanted people to know what he had promised to say under oath.

 “I think when it came to it, the government really didn’t want to hear what a lot of us had to say, including David and people like myself.

“Because really there’s been no other form of Guantanamo person that’s ever, under oath, testified.”

The four pages contain details of Mr Neely’s work as a military police officer at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2005, including his interaction with David Hicks and some of the abuses he says he saw there.

He cites one incident where "a detainee was pretty much beaten to a bloody pulp, until his cell, his cage was stained with his own blood.”

­­In another, he describes how detainees were “frequently beaten” in full view of other inmates. 

The DPP case against David Hicks was dropped after lawyers successfully challenged the admissibility of documents including details of his guilty plea made to the United States Military Commission, “based on the conditions and circumstances in which he made the relevant admissions".

The notorious prison, located on a US military base in Cuba, has been described as a ‘legal black hole’ by human rights groups, in part because of the use of coercion to obtain details of actions, including confessions.

David Hicks , Rhiannon Elston SBS

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Your Comments

friends,friends, no more!

zac - from nerang gold coast qld, 9 months ago

well i did not follow at the case of david hicks on full,he was caught fighting against allies forces a few years ago,then taken to guantanamo bay,and then the 2 outstanding years of semtence he finished in aussie prision.they sayen everyone was tortured ova there in guantanamo,australia should stop all that story to be friends all the time with the u.s is no more john howard era,when george bush and tony blair from u.k all where a thunderball.that's finish,australia should have a step distance

US abuses continued

Yousif - from Sydney, 10 months ago

What would not be surprising is reading another article tonight in which US criticises a legitamate ecomonic competitor like China on human rights.

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