Skip to main content

David Hicks: Ex judges & lawyers write to Howard

"A group of the nation's eminent legal minds, including four former Supreme and Federal Court judges, have warned John Howard that terrorism would destroy civilised society if Australia continued to back the detention and military trial of David Hicks.

Former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel and former NSW Liberal attorney-general and Supreme Court judge John Dowd are among the 76 signatories on an open letter to the Prime Minister arguing that Hicks - who remains in indefinite US detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - is being held illegally and deserves a fair trial.

"Whether or not David Hicks is in fact guilty or innocent is not the issue. The illegality lies in the process of indefinite detention and unfair trial by military commission," the lawyers say".

The continued detention of David Hicks is a disgrace. More so is the assertion by PM Howard and A-G Ruddock the other day that had Hicks not challenged a military tribunal hearing that he would now know his fate. Being slaven to the US is one thing, but for Howard and Ruddock, more so as lawyers, to see no issue with Hicks' continued detention says a lot for their values - absolutely none! The time has come to act!

Read an article in The Australian, here, dealing with the letter to Howard.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think the most definitive article on the punishment of David Hicks is in our latest The Monthly magazine. Professor of History and CIA torture expert Alfred McCoy chronicles the unbelievable torture at the hands of the CIA. I can email it if you are interested in seeing it.. Johnd (AT) themonthly.com.au
June 06, 2006 12:10 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...
Post a Comment
Read more