It wasn’t until David Hicks heckled Attorney General George Brandis at the Human Rights Commission awards last week in Sydney that the Senator became aware he was in attendance.
However, Mr Brandis ought to have been aware that despite later labelling Hicks a terrorist, the Adelaide born man has never been convicted of being a terrorist, nor a member of any terrorist organisation. In 2007, David Hicks pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism, and he says, that charge is now at the point of being overturned.
Hicks, the kid from Adelaide who converted to Islam and trained with the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as the Pakistan based Lashkar e-Taiba before it was designated a terrorist group, isn’t surprised by Senator Brandis’ assertion.
“Out of all the politicians, he’s the one who’s been the most personal towards me. In parliament, as shadow Attorney General, he was accusing Labour of being weak on terror and not taking action on proceeds of crime.
“He’s always had it in for me,” said Hicks, who says he was tortured before, during and after interrogations during his five and a half year detention in Guantanamo.
Having been apprehended in Afghanistan in 2001, Hicks was charged with conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy. Those charges were not tried because the US Supreme Court declared the Military Commission that was established to hear them unlawful. Hicks was not released.
Undeterred, President George W Bush reconstituted the military commissions in 2006 and nearly a year later, Hicks was charged with providing material support for terrorism, which was not a war crime before the new Military Commissions Act was passed.
Hicks signed what’s known as an Alford plea in 2007. He did not admit to providing material support for a terrorist organisation but admitted the prosecution could prove he probably had. The plea ensured his return to Australia where he served a 7 and a half-month sentence.
He’s has long argued his detention for so long without charge, and his eventual prosecution were the result of a political deal between Washington and Canberra. Now Dr. Aloysia Brooks, a Sydney based human rights campaigner and friend of Hicks has obtained a series of diplomatic cables that shed some light on the claim.
As David Hicks awaited charges to be brought against him in Guantanamo, back home, public concern was intensifying over how long it was taking. Anger was directed at Prime Minister John Howard, preparing to call an election whilst being accused of abandoning an Australian citizen abroad.
A visit to Australia in February 2007 from US Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t help. Cheney’s stated mission was to thank Australia for its military assistance in Afghanistan and Iraq. But high on the agenda was the case of David Hicks. Indeed, Mr Cheney had been extensively forewarned.
“Any further delay in bringing new charges and/or proceeding toward a determination of Hicks’ case by a reconstituted military commission is virtually certain to elevate what previously had been a manageable irritant between allies to a significant bilateral problem. The status quo is hurting the image of the United States here and is damaging Howard politically,” according to a cable from the US embassy in Canberra to the State department in Washington, dated January 2007, just ahead of Mr Cheney’s visit.
The cables note “the pressure on Howard to show progress on the Hicks case, already intense, is made more extreme by the looming federal election. As the memory of September 11 recedes, so does Australian patience for the military commission process.”
"In the absence of progress ... there is a distinct possibility that PM Howard who must call for a national election later this year will ask the United States to release Hicks and permit his return to Australia.”
Mr Howard had stated publically he was unhappy and uncomfortable with the Hicks status quo. But as he readied to confront voters against a new Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, he wanted the Americans to act.
Soon after Cheney’s visit to Australia, the US charged Hicks and the rest, as they say, is history.
But its ‘history’ David Hicks appears determined not to leave to the politicians to write.
He has appealed to the Military Commission Court of Appeal in Guantanamo to vacate the original charge of providing material support for terrorism. Brooks isn't giving up either.
“The Australian government is one of the few that escapes any scrutiny of its involvement in rendition, in involvement with torture,” says Dr Brooks.
Now, she is calling for an enquiry in to political interference in the US judicial process and what the Australian government knew about the use of torture in Guantanamo.
Monica Attard is a Sydney based freelance journalist and former ABC foreign correspondent and senior broadcaster.
