Skip to main content

A-G Ruddock disgraces his Office - and himself

This month's The Monthly features an article on David Hicks and the interrogation-methods employed on him by his captors.

As ABC Radio National's Breakfast program introduced an interview with A-G Ruddock this morning:

"Yesterday on the program we heard accusations that the infamous Guantanamo Bay base - and it's off-limits, CIA operated Camp Echo are being used by the United States to perfect psychological torture.

Australian David Hicks appears to be a key detainee being submitted to this alleged torture regime. Its claimed that Hicks was held in a closet sized, self contained cell without sunlight for 244 days and nights, watched around the clock by silent guards.

The accusations come as a new report into alleged CIA abuses is bringing to light the widespread American practice of rendition. Rendition is another word for the kidnapping of terror suspects and transporting them to secret prisons in third countries where they have allegedly been tortured out of the reach of US or International law.

The European report accuses a dozen European nations of turning a blind eye to rendition and even active involvement in the practice.

The United States denies any involvement in rendition or torture. Here's US Secretary of State speaking in December last year:

For its part the Australian Government has accepted United States assurances from the highest levels that torture is not being used at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.

So has David Hicks been abandoned by Australia and tortured at Camp Echo?"


So, then we had our A-G being interviewed - check it our here. One word describes his responses to very, very serious allegations - appalling! Ruddock has not only diminished the Office he holds, but himself, as an attorney, who so flagrantly wears the Amnesty International badge.

This, here, is how The Age reports Ruddock's response to The Monthly article.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?