The Hicks debacle

The other day I woke up to the drone of Gerard Henderson on Radio National. I disagree with him on most things, but that morning he was being excessively disagreeable. At least Fran Kelly wasn’t prepared to let him get away with it, but even so I couldn’t bear to listen after a while, and I switched off. It was about the David Hicks case. Henderson was trying to argue that, regardless of the issues around the legality or fairness of his trial, and regardless of the fact that he has been incarcerated without charge for three and a half years or more, nobody, on either side of Australian politics, was denying that he was guilty, and guilty of serious offences. He then went on to state that Hicks had had training in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that this training was ‘extensive’, a term he made much of. Now considering that it is Hicks’ accusers that claim his training to be ‘extensive’ (and it is solely on their evaluation that Henderson is relying), and that those accusers have an enormous vested interest in finding guilty at least someone out of the hundreds they’ve had incarcerated without charge for years, it comes as no surprise that they make this claim. What this term signals to us is not anything factual about Hicks, I’d contend, but the determination of the military tribunal to make Hicks one of those few (and there are only four left, including Hicks) whose ‘guilt’ will somehow make the long incarceration of the other hundreds justifiable.

The central issue in the Hicks situation, as we all know, or should know, is whether or not Hicks will receive a fair trial. Henderson is more than fudging the issue, he’s proclaiming Hicks’ guilt (of what I’m not sure – presumably of having worked with or trained with organisations or groups which were subsequently dubbed terrorist), on the basis of evidence obtained from the very source the impartiality of which is so heavily under question. It’s another unacceptable example of trial by media.

When pressured about the fairness of the trial process, Henderson seemed to consider the fact that the Americans are ‘at war’ to be sufficient reason for any irregularities in Hicks’ treatment thus far, but this is patently absurd. Many serious doubts about the fairness of these military commissions have been raised by persons far more qualified to judge of the matter than Henderson, including former prosecutors John Carr and Robert Preston (two of the three prosecutors who have resigned due to serious reservations about the commissions’ fairness), Australia’s former war crimes prosecutor Greg James, and the head of Australia's military bar, Captain Paul Willee QC. The Weekend Australian here gives a sobering account of their misgivings, though I think the article’s a bit rough on Hicks himself. Not that I have too much sympathy with Hicks’ jihadist sympathies, but the authors seem also to have fallen for the American line about his ‘extensive’ training. Who really knows what training, if any, Hicks has had? Certainly Gerard Henderson doesn’t, and neither do the Weekend Oz writers. Everyone's relying on the same dubious sources.