Mikey HarrangueMan is doing his usual fine job of keeping up with the news on David Hicks.
The maltreatment of David Hicks by the Howard government and the Bush administration is an ongoing issue (five years now) and one that I haven't been particularly consistent about posting on. Nonetheless, David Hicks' problems don't cease to exist when I or anyone else fail to pay them proper attention. The news that 'charges' have been laid against Hicks give the misleading impression that he is under the authority of a proper justice system under which he will be afforded the sort of trial that you or I might expect to receive if we were charged with committing a crime in Australia.
Upon hearing that one of the charges David Hicks is facing is of 'attempted murder', a reasonable person might well ask who it is that Hicks attempted to murder. One might even assume that Hicks would be aware of the identity of the person whose murder he is being charged with attempting to commit. The assumption, of course, is wrong. The Australian public is unlikely to ever be informed of the details of the charges against Hicks or the supposed evidence supporting these charges. Even Major Michael Mori, the man whose thankless job it is to defend Hicks, does not know who Hicks is supposed to have attempted to murder.
There is no transparency in the case of David Hicks, and with the Howard government intent on demonstrating its proficiency at publicly fellating US president George Bush there is unlikely to be any justice for this Australian citizen either.
2 comments:
I can't wait to hear some of the hearsay evidence that is allowed to be used in this system (thus resolving the old age dilema of intelligence information used legally which can threaten the source because of this antiquated hearsay rule that of course should be thrown out the window cause ... cause ... he's a terrorist! Even though he was a member of an odious little group the US spent millions on negotiating with for an oil pipeline Pre S11, the US declared such ilk to be dangerous and hence the retroactive charges.)
Remember Sarah, it's a new paradigm apparently. Because political violence has only happened since S11 and therefore all those silly laws that successfully protected public/suspects alike and didn't at all provide propaganda value to issue motivated groups to sink their teeth into are no longer working.
God bless those on the right. They're protecting our freedoms ... all the while their poisoning the planet for the sake of their bottom line.
And they wonder why the left is slowly rising again.
The entire thing is a disgusting disgrace. If there was ever a reason to get rid of John Howard and his people, this is it. I have given up on trying to work out exactly how our government was permitted to let him rot over there, in those appalling conditions that are - for a reason I've given up on trying to find - permitted to continue.
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