The ‘fair go’ given to David Hicks is repugnant and inhuman.

Hicks has been charged with no offence, nor has any substantial evidence been presented. He has been demonised by the federal government who are accepting our money to protect Australians and who have advocated a ‘fair go’ as a key Australian value.

Hicks was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn’t being driven around in commonwealth cars while watching nearly $300 million being given to our stated enemy. Whatever he did, it was less than that.

Now he’s been incarcerated without trial by a foreign country for 5 years. He should be repatriated immediately and given a fair trial if there is any substantive evidence against him, or compensated for the government’s insouciance towards its own citizens.

Fat chance, Dick.  This is the same government that has locked up several of its own innocent citizens in detention centres.  This has included children and the ill.  In one case the only “crime” alleged against the man they threw behind razor wire was that he spoke with an Irish accent.

They cannot afford to give Hicks a trial for the very reason that any fair trial under Australian law would find him not guilty.  This would mean a loss of face for the government, and a loss of face for the government is more damaging than any miscarriage of justice.

The present situation might not be too good for Hicks, but is is good for Howard and what is good for Howard is good for Australia, regardless of the ethics of the situation.

5 years for what? To serve poltiical interests both here and abroad. Bring the poor bugger back! This is one (perhaps only) Federal Greens policy I would support. Then lock up the politicians and AWB staff who funnelled bribes to Saddam. I would agree with Dick - who has the more harm?

John Walker Lindh was given 20 years for treason in the U.S.  Do you think Hicks would get that here?  No way he would probably end up suing the government for millions. Our system would let him off in a heartbeat and the govenment knows that, hence the inaction.  Personally I believe there are so many more unattended priorities as far as helping the innocent in the world that the low profile given to Hicks by our government is totally justified.  He made his bed, let him sleep in it.  The subversion of the organisation he was engaged with is so complete as to make the Stalinists and Nazis look like a tuesday night book club.

Well, rarely, I have to disagree with you JH. Australia is a pretty decent place at the end of the day, and I think that how we look after our citizens reflect on us not only internationally but also inwardly. This fellow is extemely unlikely ever to do such a foolish thing again - he should be returned to his family, who obviously have a great love for him and will help keep him on the straight and narrow. Hicks is clearly not a high level operative of global terrorism, just a silly boy, easily led, and thinking he was on some cracking adventure until it all went sour.

I enjoy reading, and usually agree with, both Rignoli and Herbert but in this case concur with Rignoli.  Regardless of what Hicks is or isn’t, he’s entitled to a fair trial in a timely fashion.  5 years without charge or trial is almost unbelievable in a western society.

True, Hicks is unlikely to pose much of a threat in Australian minus a passport and on some sort of security watch. But the fact is he remains in a legal limbo and has by all accounts added to his detention by postponing preceedings looking for more legal loopholes, convinced I suspect that his chances of getting off are slim or afraid of what may be metered out. 

I think you will find the man continued his brainwashed rhetoric from the Al queda boys for quiet a while until he realised they weren’t about to conquer the U.S.  And in the process broke several anti terrorism laws and this is why he is in the worst catagory of detainees in Gitmo.  That said I am just a bit loathe to apply my sympathies to someone who has, initially at least, completely engaged such a murderous ideology.  I’m not sure how wise it is to hang ourselves with our blinding faith in the process of the law. 

On another note, it seems like this whole business is blowing over until it happens again.

AND ALL THIS GOES ON WHILE POSSIBLY THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN MERCENARIES (SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE) OPERATE AROUND THE GLOBE WHILE GOOD OLD USA LOOKS THE OTHER WAY.have a nice day,crud.

John, how do you know all this?  Have any of your assertions about Hicks been tested in a court of law?  How otherwise can we ascertain beyond reasonable doubt sufficient facts to pass a sentence?

Even given the facts we can probably agree on, how do we know whether five years under the conditions he has suffered is enough or too much or, if it’s not enough, then how much longer should he serve?

Do we take your word, that of Ruddock, of the Pentagon, of torturers, of tribal Afghans with an axe to grind?  Or do we take the risk of letting the due processes of the laws of a civilised society determine the outcome?

“Our system would let him off in a heartbeat”...surely that’s the entire point JH. When applied as it should be our system is a just one.

Detention without trial is not something we can adopt to suit our mood, opinions or prejudices. The “inaction” by our government to suit its own ends is literally, nothing more than criminal and probably more typical of a Stalinist regime.

Those who believe all are liars, are more likely to believe lies.  That is anaphorism just for you justabloke.

Just what ends have been served by our governments inaction on the Hicks case Rob.  I await the usual litany of tenuous conspiratorial chinese whispers.

Bring Hicks home!

I too agree that David Hicks should be brought back to face a fair trial. As far as terrorism goes I say that if we believe the rhetoric and lies that the papers and our governments peddle at us then we are in big trouble.
I can’t think of anything that would instil more terror in a population than having helicopters buzzing overhead ready to blow your car up for any perceived indiscretion or having the mother of all bombs dropped on your town, or even the threat of nuclear weapons being used as Little George threatened at the beginning of his invasion of Iraq.
Remember that the supposed evil dictator was put in power and stayed there because of US support, and he was also a great friend when they wanted him to fight a war for them against Iran.
On Iran isn’t it strange that the U.S are now talking of asking for theirs and Syria’s help to sort out the mess that GW has made in Iraq.
We have always had terrorists, remember in the 1960’s that Croatian terrorists were training in southern NSW in readiness for returning to Yugoslavia to continue the lifelong fight with their enemies who were also Croatian’s.
Then the Badher Meinhoff Gang in Germany, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Irish Republican Army.
Please don’t fall for the trap,
The biggest and scariest terrorists in the world have the biggest and scariest weapons.
You figure out who they are !
Hicks hasn’t even been charged, I was on the mistaken belief that our cherished democratic countries worked on the assumption of innocence.
How do you make up for 5 years in hell.

Would that be an aphorism, John?  It seems to have little to do with the traditional rhetorical device of anaphora.  Or it may be an anaphorism;  I like that one, because my Macquarie defines an aphorism as embodying a general truth.  An anaphorism, then, would embody a lack of truth.  So like most of your posts.

I don’t believe that “all are liars”.  Anyone who says David Hicks has been fairly dealt with would either be a liar or be grossly misinformed.  I admit I am likely to believe lies, however, as I’m a trusting soul, who accepts what people say on face value until they prove that they don’t deserve to be believed.

Rob can answer for himself on what he thinks the inaction has done for the government, but as I said in post #2 bringing Hicks home and freeing him would embarrass Howard and Ruddock, and embarrassment is so obviously a negative in politics that it needs no tenuous conspiracy theory to be sure that politicians would want to avoid it.

Looks like a typo is your strongest argument cobber.

Sorry about my flippancy, John.  At times it just seems a pleasant change from repeatedly making logical points that you manage to give the impression of not reading.

I would love you to just tell us two things:

One:  Exactly how you know beyond reasonable doubt what Hicks has done to deserve punishment, and
Two:  Why your method of discovering the facts is superior to a method that would be used in a court of law.

My reference to “inaction” was in quoting JH’s mention of it.

It should be apparent to anyone with a skerrick of perception that the reason for the government’s inaction is that if David Hicks is brought home he cannot be charged. He has not broken any Australian laws. His “crime” is to offend the sensibilities of John Howard and Phillip Ruddock…and their crime, for it is a crime, is to leave him unlawfully imprisoned in the hands of a foreign power, while they blithely and blatantly lie to the Australian public, claiming that they are doing everything in their power to get the matter resolved as “quickly as possible”.

The Australian government spokesmen show notable arrogance and shrouded guilt by not offering even so much as a full and caring explanation to those electorate underlings who care for justice and the wellbeing of Aussie ‘mates’.

I have heard Howard make to the media a flippant denouncement saying that he (Howard) has (and I assume ‘has’ is still the case) no sympathy for the person ... and sorry I don’t recall precisely any further, but it was Howard being judge, jury, negligent of duty, well out of his depth and not in touch with Jesus.

Impeach Howard and his cronies alonside Bush and Cheney.  And give those in our country who turn a blind eye or rest in blaming the government a polite jolt.

Spare a thought for all others in similar circumstance and don’t trust government spokesmen who don’t bother to explain.

We’re a good country but we’re way behind where we could be.

J Latham

I will first and foremost lay my card here on the table—Bring Hicks Home. Now.

If anyone wants to make a case that the Howard has done a good job during ten years in office, good on them.  My mortgage repayments keep rising because of pesky interest rates, and when my kids are old enough to get casual work it may involve contractual negotiations that last for weeks (with an unpaid half-hour for lunch and no overtime) but hey, I’m relaxed if not comfortable.

But this goverment has developed a nasty habit of treating some citizens like utter crap.

It started, if you like, with David Hicks; it has continued with Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon, and various other individuals who may only have committed the cardinal sin of not remembering where their passport is.

And typically there is not one shed of responsibility to be had by the minister concerned—the phrase I heard this morning was ‘system failure’ or something of that ilk. What bullshit.  Are we on an airplane, or something? (Some of us should be, of course, if you believe DIMIA. Hicks certainly should be.)

So the wrongful and shameful detention of human beings (and lets not forget Tampa) is explained away by the new Australian mantra: sorry we locked your father up for nine months because he was drunk and sounded like he was speaking in a detestable foreign tongue, kiddies. Our system failed.

This is both the legacy and the image that Howard will leave behind, unless he develops a conscience in the next forseeable term. It is a disgrace, an embarrassment, a travesty.

And the really sad thing is that it won’t be enough to get Howard out of the Big Chair at the next election. If I need another reason to ignore the bland jingoism of January 26th, I certainly have it.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/133605.php

Message for David and Terry on this National Day of Action for David Hicks 9/12/2006

Acknowledging from Launceston, Tasmania your courage in the face of deep suffering visited upon you.

Honouring your bravery and grace. With every action that you have taken to save David you are extending every Australian’s liberty and understanding of their freedom.

In turn in your work for David you are addressing the ongoing trauma and nightmare of the other inmates of Guantanemo Bay. 

For all of this we are immensely appreciative and grateful.

We seek for the resolution and freedom from this profound travesty.

Martin Cole

Helen Tait

Killing innocents is very honourable is it not Helen.

John, would you please, when you’ve replied to my questions in post 16, explain which “innocents” Hicks has been proved to have killed.

Or is this just another case of you being prosecutor, judge and jury alone in your sick little fantasy world?

My world is healthy, I presume you suffer from personality projection justabloke.

Justa, your questions are valid, but John can’t read them.  He is a drone.  If it’s been in the Murdoch press, then it must be right. He doesn’t need to form his own opinions, you see. The ones he swallows are just fine.

Rupert rules the world—and in fact David will probably only come home when uncle Rupe reckons the front page is ready for it.

There are Australian citizens who HAVE killed innocent people—in this country and abroad.  In those cases they face a trial. If there is evidence to support their conviction, that’s what happens—they are convicted and jailed. John, pay attention: this is what civilised nations do.

They do not leave their citizens in a room the size of the average Australian home’s toilet, with only a glimmer of natural light, while they convene a court that is most likely to find in their favour and against the unfortunate prisoner.

John, this is getting boring.  Please answer these simple questions:

How have you ascertained the facts about what Hicks has done wrong?

Why is your method better than having the evidence presented to a court of justice?

I shall add a third:  If you have incontrovertible evidence about Hicks, unknown to anyone else, do you believe that you should offer it to the authorities, rather than keep it to yourself?

Glorified lynch mob ya reckon Cameron?  I’ll ignore your personal barbs, had worse from better. Well he took on the US and I for one am more likely to believe the side of a country that has held a beam of light out to liberty since its inception rather than a trumped up thug who got what he was looking for, although he probably now wishes he had got what the group he was running with so desperately craves, death. Regardless of your narrow view of history that is no doubt blinded by your hate for its current President.  Remembering that all this rather heinous business may have been avoided had its previous president been more worried about the threat form Osama and co. as opposed to the threat of a certain Mrs. Bill Clinton finding out about his far more pressing matters.

After a regular kind of war there is usually an expatriation of POWs some time soon after the conflict has ended. This is expected of so-called civilised countries, and we wouldn’t tolerate it if other countries held our combatants for extended periods of time. Hicks was just a silly fellow out of his depth, hot under the collar for a cause he did not understand. As a gormless foot soldier in this conflict, there is no value, other than the symbolic, of keeping him locked up. Western democracies look down their noses at other countries that lock up perceived political enemies for long periods without trial. We should show how civilised we are by using the appropriate diplomatic channels to bring him home to his family. I doubt whether this unfortunate character will ever do anything silly like this again.

John (post 26), thank you for telling us that you believe the US rather than Hicks himself.  This would make some sort of sense if you said whom or what in the US you believe, as the vast majority of US citizens (and billions of others throughout the world) believe that the US justice system is pretty damn good at discovering the facts.

Not nearly so many believe that you should only listen to the prosecution’s case, or to the accused’s.

So why support keeping the Hicks case out of that system? Or, for that matter, out of the Australian justice system, which also has a pretty fair track record? 

Saying that you believe what somebody else has said is hardly a contribution to the sum of factual knowledge.

Your comments on Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, are good for a chuckle.  You seem to be saying that if Clinton had gone all-out after him we would have been spared the situation where the current US administration has proven itself totally incapable of even locating him, let alone eliminating him.

Naughty Bill should have had the foresight to realise that his successor would be an incompetent oaf surrounding himself with a coalition of the cynically greedy and the loopy superstitious, but he was distracted by an intern.

We can put the worldwide surge in terrorism down to the Lewinsky affair.  Except, of course, that the facts show that there has been no worldwide surge in terrorism.  The facts, John, the facts. Know what they are?

Worse from better, John? Ouch.  There goes my night’s sleep.

I challenge you to be intellectually brave and consider this from, say, a humanitarian point of view.

I accept that Hicks made choices—and if he is guilty, let him do his time.  But you do not—and possibly can’t—explain why Hicks shouldn’t be exposed to the same legal and humanitarian courtesies as anyone else detained in a supposedly developed country.

I hear the guards get some interesting treatment from the inmates at gitmo, crap and the like thrown at them.  I suppose if you see the images of guys in orange suits being chained down and pictures of David Hicks with his Cousin or what ever as one increasingly sees on the television these days one might start to believe this to be the over riding reality of the situation.  Funny how propagand works isn’t it.
As for your semantics, I would just say that the situation is unprecedented henceforth the delay. You should not be so quick to criticise Cuba Cameron, you sound like a kind of wanna be communist, you might miss your invite to Fidels wake or the like.

Hmmm….maybe time for you to eat some more of your famous “Brain Fed Beef” , hey John H?

John, if you read what I said with a view to understanding it rather than just nitpicking ot find grounds on which you can ‘throw some crap’ at me, you will discern for yourself that I am not criticising Cuba in any way.  Some of the world’s best cigars come from there, not to mention some of the world’s best salsa musicians.  Can’t say I’ve been there, but I wouldn’t mind.

Cuba is in this case simply providing the convenient remote real estate for the real enemy of the piece (or peace, if you are in the mood for a pun), the good ol’ boys of the US military.  There is probably some distant historical irony in this, since the US got its knickers in a twist over the then-USSR apparently throwing up a missile-silo shaped renovations in the same little corner of the world in the early 1960s, but that’s not for here.

And I agree—this is unprecedented.  I don’t know of many apparently civilised countries that question people by using techniques that amount to torture in anyone’s book.  There are many pages in the propaganda book—as many pages as there are ways to kill a man.  Let’s see—remember this Golden Oldie all the way back from 2003? “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.” Or from our own government, how about this: “These people are throwing their children overboard.”

If you are seriously going to (even partly)defend your position on the premise that guards at Camp X-Ray (more irony—nothing transparent there!) are being badly treated, check out any maximum security prison pretty much anywhere in the world.  Sooner or later you’ll come across some horror stories.  There are even some, shock horror, from our very own Risdon.

Frankly, John, what you choose to believe and ignore is your business.  Just don’t pretend to be any kind of moral authority, when there are legitimate and opposing points of view that you actively seek to discredit.

I was chuffed that after so long campaigning for Davids release that at last there seemed to be some actual interest, however i have no idea as to whether any has followed up on my plea, so once again may i ask all those who showed rightful compassion for him to all on “THE SAME DAY” along with all those that you can muster to send an email to the ny times and the washington post , asking for justice and his imediate release ,and to any other paper you can think of.
    i have no idea what become of my post this thread, (seems to have become a habit)now for those who will join me the addresses of the two papers are , .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
          c,mon guy,s get with the program !
this is an apalling situation ,  we bombard both papers on the same day , is anyone going to come on board ?
            d.d.

post(33)  the date is saturday 13th jan ,so c,mon everyone you have he addresses and as i have posted which may have disappeared i have written to approx 40 papers around he country in order to get like minded folk to join ,so perhaps with some luck the “ny times” and the “washington post” may recieve
thousands of emails, i,ll be happy with a few hundred ,so once again “get with the program” as David may well have been the son of any one of us.
                  d.d.

I’m not pretending anything Cameron.  IF you weren’t pretending you would be the first to volunteer your services to Davids every whim on his return to Australia.

Goodness gracious, John.  So you are not *pretending* to be a moral authority.

I presume that this means you are the genuine article.

John Herbert as moral authority.  Now that is a scary thought.

As for me, I’m not pretending to have any opinion about what David Hicks has done.  I’m happy for some kind of fair legal process to sort that out.

Of course, if we all accept JH as our moral authority, then we can dispense with such tiresome details as fair legal process.

It is still a pity, though, John, that you won’t share with us the means by which you have discovered the facts about Hicks when no court in the world has been able to.

Do i gather that from the lack of post,s that there is no interest in my proposal ?

    So much for compassion i guess !
             
                d.d.

What you are saying is nonsense JB,  essentially that unless a court has stated so, then the specifics of an event cannot be easonable discussed.  Give it a rest, the whole idea of a forum like this is to put forth your point of view relevant to the topic.  All I’ve heard from you and the like is some blinded belief in the uber fairness of our judicial system, which in itself is hogwash.  Go give your naive chants to someone who might belive it like first year Uni wetbacks.  I’ll make my own assesments based on my own life experience, you my friend can take it or leave it.

So Hicks is guilty based on JH’s life experience?  And my post is “nonsense”?

Where are these “specifics” of his case being “reasonably discussed”?  And what are they?

A court case might not be needed in order for discussion in a forum, but in any decent society it should be necessary before a man spends five years in gaol.

Our judicial system might not be perfect, but I’d be interested in any suggestion as to what we should replace it with.

I guess Piers covers most of what you want to hear in the mercury 8/1/07.  He speels out pretty much what I have been saying with all the specifics to please a flotilla of boffins, nuff said.

Are you referring to Piers Akerman, John?  If you are going accept his heavily slanted view on the matter—of Hicks or anything else—then that’s probably all we need to know about your credibility on the issue.

One of the famous dead Greeks once said that the mark of an educated mind was to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. 

Try it, John. It can be very stimulating.  And stop believing everything Piers tells you, or you’ll go blind.

Hey guys ! i resurrected (probably spelt wrong cant find the bloody thesauras) this thread to see if anyone is coming on board, not for another display of semantics,  Sat 13!  yes or no ?
                  d.d.

Piers was only putting his slant on what Ruddock had just said, perhaps you need to practice what you preach Cameron, with less patronizing invection of course.  Your famous dead geeks are amusing though.  The truth is out of style for all you anti American yappers ain’t it though!

yeah ,
        ok, got the message ,lets hope next time it,s not any one of your kids.
                  d.d.

John, pay attention. Please.

The ‘truth’ of a criminal offence will be decided by a court. This is not necessarily the same as an incontrovertible truth, such as saying the sun is hot.

In a court, the truth depends on what can be proved by evidence—if there is no evidence of A taking place, then A can’t be proved.

Justice is out fashion for the compassionless and inhuman commentators, with whom you uncritically align yourself.

I have never suggested that Hicks is innocent, and I have never said that he should go free.  He should be charged—he should have been charged a long time ago—and he should be bought back to this country, of his birth, to face trial and serve his sentence. The allegations against him need to be tested in court, via the available evidence. This is not a complicated concept, John, but you don’t seem prepared to even try an understand it.

The narrow-minded, petty, gutless, short-sighted and bigoted opinionmeisters in this country have already tried Hicks, found him guilty, and gullible readers who swallow their nonsense are only too happy to go along for the ride.  Much easier than having to think for themselves.

By the by, Akerman apparently has mates on the Howard front bench; his columns are therefore little than Howard government press releases.  To attach any more weight to them than that really is misguided.

I graciously decline to pay attention to your ramblings Cameron, thanks for the invitation though, as I have, I’m sorry to say, heard it all before, but with more spittle from its originator.

Nice adjectives though, I’d better sit down, so gutted.  You didn’t happen to listen or read the side of the people who arrested him did you?  Kinda puts my argument ahead of yours, but I guess you’d rather listen to a lawyer, Rob Starry perhaps who is half a world away or any other foreshortened apologist for terrorism. Forgive me for my, what was it, oh yes biggoted and gutless opinion.  Your reality is so groovy, keep it up man!

Akerman is to Howard, what John Herbert is to Kevin Bonham.  (...!) Akerman should never be described as a journalist.

And further: on tonight’s news I managed to catch Phillip Ruddock smirking that he had not even seen the brief of alleged offences Hicks is apparently being held for, or the evidence that will be used against Hicks when (if) he ever receives a fair trial.

“I’m not the one prosecuting him,” Mr Ruddock smirked.  He smirks a lot, I’ve noticed.  A lot of Howard’s ministers do.

Anyway, this is the man who has left Hicks to the devices of the US military justice system, and yes folks, there’s an oxymoron to be proud of.  No you aren’t prosecuting him, Phillip, merely condemning him without the legal mechanism of a trial or anything like it.  For someone who is the top legal representative in this country, that’s a pretty appalling situation to be in.  To issue such condemnation without due perusal, let alone consideration, of the available evidence, is beyond disgraceful.

Yet what are we to expect of a man who abandoned so many of his ethics and values the minute he accepted a portfolio in the Howard cabinet—a man who, in an ABC Lateline interview I think it was, repeatedly referred to a child being held in a detention centre as ‘it’?

Pretty much indefensible, in my humble opinion.

You guys are laughable.  Who writes your stuff,  Sheik Halaly maybe? Perhaps he would up hold a better vision of justice than the US army in your view Cameron(SMIRK!)  Oh how you loathe our society, yet by default defend all types of barbarity, endless reams of twaddle and the like. Why don’t you walk the street with some desperately lame ryhme and a sign demanding justice from a beauracrat, that would make me laugh.

Crap analogy by the way Rick, goes in my worst ten things to be posted on Tas times.

TODAY I SENT THIS TO 20 OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PAPERS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES.

  FREE DAVID HICKS NOW BEFORE
  HE DIES IN YOUR HELLHOLE !
    DULY SIGNED WITH NAME AND ADDRESS.

HOWEVER IT APPEARS ! I,M SAD TO SAY, THAT NO SUCH COMPASSION SEEMS EVIDENT AMONG POSTER.S HERE, AS NOT ONE AGREED TO COME ABOARD ,UNLIKE THE MANY E,MAILS I RECIEVED FROM MOST OF THE COUNTRY IN AGREEANCE .  SAY’S VOLUMES FOR TASMANIAN.S

              D.D

Since you don’t respond with any meaningful counter-argument to anything I’ve said, John, and cry mockery at apparently how offended you are, I can only assume that you are indeed well short of any meaningful defence of your position. Hicks is bad, okay? He just is! I know he is! My life experience tells me! What a heap of empty claptrap.

You commit, for starters, the following errors that would have you laughed loudly out of any formal debate: you take my response to one issue, that of Hicks (for whom justice has not been served) and use it to make generalised assumptions about my views on the concept of justice—apparently involving Sheik al-Hilaly (and I will do him the courtesy of spelling his name correctly).

Which is your second error—you make associations from points I raise to totally irrelevant issues. You did this also earlier in this thread with a reference to Cuba, which I had not remotely referred to. A reference to the Mufti is another example.

I do not defend ‘all types of barbarity’, John.  I do not defend torture, for example.  I challenge you to find solid evidence that David Hicks has not been tortured during his incarceration, either while at Guantanamo or before he arrived there.  If you are serious about defending your case, you’ll have a crack at it.

And finally, John, your comment about the men who arrested Hicks—this reinforces my point that you are not bothering to read closely anything posted on this thread that might run counter to your entrenched and, yes, misguided view. Until such time as Hicks goes to trial, what these men have to say should not be relevant. Then, when there is a trial, what they say should be subject to cross-examination.

Hicks was not tried or convicted by the men who arrested him, John. They might have evidence about his activities at the time. If they have shared that evidence now in the public domain (as it seems they have, since you seem pretty familiar with it) then that could be considered prejudicial to Hicks’ chance of a fair trial.

But I know you don’t want Hicks to get a fair trial, or perhaps a trial at all, so you won’t care about that.

Good night.

You really are a learned boffin I assume Kameroon.  The fact is he hasn’t been tried because he is jumping through every loophole trying not to get tried.  That must be because he is hiding somthing is what I would be thinking, but you and every other theoretical gopher out there thinks its because the American military is as corrupt as a blogging consensus.  With regards save your mothering and crocodile tears for someone you would really like to tuck into bed, thanks anyhow cobber.

You said he was detained in a so called developed country.  He is held in Cuba is he not, I was saying don’t be rude to Cuba, oohh the boffin ers, call the police.  I bet you have a fantastic sense of humour Cameron, we really should meet up.

Well! Sat 13 has been and gone , and Herbert,s barbarous (!) attitude ,has had you all so busy winding him up, one assumes that none of you bothered anyway, after all it wasn’t THAT important was it! just a young Aussie guy being shackled and tortured for 5 years of his young life and how could that possibly,  compare with scoring points on (!) herbert, it defy,s logic ! i really don,t know who is worse when it comes down to it, all said and done !
                    d.d.

Hicks is being detained BY a so-called civilised nation, John.  I think you’ll find this is what I I said.  If I typed ‘in’ instead of ‘by’, I’ll call that a typo.  He is not being detained by Cuba, he is being detained at the apparent pleasure of the “President” of the “United” States. Cuba, as I said, is merely supplying the real estate. (indeed, I did say ‘in’. Just checked. Sorry ‘bout that, Chief.)

And you’ve evaded the torture question, John. Why?

Listen, Don, I really appreciate your tenacity but please don’t assume that silence equates to inaction.  I have emailed mainland papers—admittedly I have written to papers in the US yet—and I have written about Hicks on Tas Times previously, here:

http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/weblog/comments/hicks-howards-choice/

Keep up the good fight, Don!

HERBERT !
        Regarding this particular issue ! i find your inane ,nasty remarks paticularly off colour,and one assumes you to be quite young as no father of any worth could express such vitriol.
        Theres a time and a place for levity and this is not one of them!  As for asking cameron for a meet ! Yeah ! i’d like to meet you to see if your appearance matches your redneck attitude , which i’m certain does, in spades!  also i can guarantee you’d not like my particular brand of humour ...(!)
          d.d.

There is no evidence of torture against Hicks tha I have heard of or seen form reliable sources.  As a matter of fact I do have kids DD and I know people whose kids have been affected by the actions of Al keedur with whom your man David Hicks has chosen to align himself.  You believe what you boys want to believe.  I have no doubts where I stand on this issue and it appears its about 180 degrees from you guys. Good luck to you its a democracy in action yee bloody har. Jokes aside, it appears that Cameron is actually devoid of a sense of humour.

(cameron)
      i know your opinion on David along with some other’s but you say you have posted here on occasion however as we all know in the grander scheme of things T.T has a limited readership and especially “australia wide” also the idea was for as many people as possible to flood those two papers on the one day with emails pertaining to his plight, i had many mainland supporters (so they said )but doing and saying are two different things and i just wasn’t able to rally Tasmanians to join ! speaks volumes for the “so called” Tassie fair go as far as i’m concerned .   
      I am really of the opinion and deeply concerned that he will die in there and what Bush is doing is criminal notwithstanding the collaboration of his miserable little deputy dog John Howard ! what an embarrassing excuse for a prime minister he has shown himself to be!  I can’t believe i actually voted for the man.
          d.d.

Gentlemen can agree to disagree, John, I’m happy with that.  One of the reasons why I have pursued this matter with you is that you didn’t seem to consider it possible that there could be another side to this issue.

I also object to your inference of personal knowledge about me from the tone or content of my posts on this thread.  Getting personal is no substitute for argument; it simply reflects your level of maturity. 

Just get back to dancing, John.  Let’s all get back to dancing. (You might recognise that as the last line of The Unknown Terrorist; today’s homework is to figure out why I would leave you with that sentiment.)

As Hicks would know, dead men don’t dance. I’ll lead, you threw the first personal stone in our crossfire Cameron in post 41.  What can I say, maybe something along the lines of practise what you preach.

A fair cop, John, I’ll call it where it’s due.  Getting personal is something of a habit of yours though, a nasty reflex perhaps, and you were doing it to other posters well before I chimed in.

Getting back on track, Ruddock has copped a serve recently in The Age—could it be that he is wrong? Is he really the right person to be Attorney General?

More food for thought, John.  What a sumptuous feast this is.