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Ruddock and Howard - Silent and condemned!

Mike Carleton's column in the SMH needs no further comment:

"The endless, Kafka-esque punishment of David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay is approaching the status of a crime itself: a vindictive crime committed by the Bush Administration, in defiance of US and international law.

Nick Cowdery, the forthright NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, was entirely correct to say last weekend that the imprisonment of Hicks and others in Gitmo was an unprincipled disgrace. "These people have not been treated according to the rule of law but according to the rule of Bush and his cronies," he said. He demanded that Hicks should be brought back to Australia.

John Howard and Philip Ruddock must have been the only two lawyers in this country who maintained that those American military tribunals would deliver a fair trial. They should have been severely embarrassed by the US Supreme Court's finding to the contrary, but there is no sign of that. They wash their Pilate hands, content to let the White House do whatever it likes. Hicks's pleading letter to the Prime Minister, published in the Herald on Thursday, was a tragic document. Howard did not deign to reply, which is about as bloodless as it gets.

There is a fight worth having here. The noble efforts of Hicks's US Marine defence attorney, Major Michael Mori, offer some hope that this Australian outcast might one day obtain the justice so scandalously denied to him by his own Government.

Perhaps Hicks was a terrorist. Perhaps he was just a hothead kid way out of his depth. It is not for politicians to decide."

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