Amy Goodman: American Kangaroo Court Claims Its First Victim (Truthdig)

American Kangaroo Court Claims Its First Victim

Posted on Mar 27, 2007
By Amy Goodman

It is appropriate that a person from Australia, home of the kangaroo, should be the first one dragged before the kangaroo court at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. David Hicks, imprisoned there for more than five years, pleaded guilty Monday to providing material support for terrorism.

The case of Hicks offers us a glimpse into the Kafkaesque netherworld of detentions, kidnappings, torture and show trials that is now, internationally, the shameful signature of the Bush administration. Hicks’ passage through this sham process affords us all an opportunity to demand the closure of Guantanamo and an end to these heinous policies. Conditions may soon exist to shutter the prison, with George Bush’s lame-duck status, the Democratic takeover of Congress, the possible departure of Guantanamo’s archdefender and architect, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and, if recent reports are true, a desire to close the prison on the part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. These bogus military commission trials amplify global contempt for the Guantanamo prison.

The Pentagon claims that Hicks was in Afghanistan fighting against the U.S., then was apprehended by the Northern Alliance in late 2001 while fleeing to Pakistan. After transfer to U.S. military control, he was moved around various detention facilities and, he says, brutally beaten and sodomized. By January 2002, he was in Guantanamo. He was subjected to repeated interrogations. He witnessed other prisoners being beaten and terrorized with dogs. He was at times kept in total darkness, at times in continual bright light (he has grown his hair to chest length so he can cover his eyes to allow him to sleep). He had no access to a lawyer for more than a year or knowledge of the charges against him. Others, those lucky enough to have lawyers or to have actually gotten out, tell similar tales of continual cold, of desecration of the Quran and of sexual humiliation designed specifically to torture Muslim men.

During his five years of detention, people fought for Hicks. His father, Terry Hicks, traveled to the U.S. He donned an orange jumpsuit, like his son was forced to wear, and stood in a 6-foot-by-8-foot cage on Broadway in New York while fielding questions from the press.
...snip...

The U.S. attorney scandal is threatening to take down Gonzales. But it is his condoning of torture from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib that should seal his fate.

The grim Guantanamo experiment is reaching its climax. The house of cards that has been erected to support this immoral, criminal enterprise is poised to collapse. Call, shout, sit down, march, donate, write, protest ... demand that Guantanamo be closed. .......

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070327_american_kangaroo_court_claims_its_first_victim/

n/t

because many innocent people have pled guilty to crimes they didn't commit under less duress than what those at Guantanamo have experienced.

Here's a challenge for you-
Do a search on Jose` Padilla-

You might be outraged by what you learn-

peace,
blu

If ya know what I mean.

:dunce:
Got'cha. Thanks-

peace,
blu

?




No way! :sarcasm:

those conditions.

under those conditions.

People much stronger than I am have done the same.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials

It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From the accounts of former GPU officer Alexander Orlov and others the methods used to extract the confessions are known: repeated beatings, torture, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion.<4>

Now tell me again who won the Cold War?

have fallen off the radar. Too much misery...
Guantánamo Bay - a human rights scandal

It is now over five years since the first detainees were transferred to the detention camp at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

Despite widespread international condemnation, hundreds of people of more than 30 nationalities are still there: without charge, and with little hope of obtaining a fair trial. http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-en

USA: David Hicks pleads guilty on one count. AI observer attends arraignment at Guantánamo

27 March 2007 AI Index: AMR 51/052/2007
At a hearing in Guantánamo on 26 March 2007, in his sixth year of detention and at the start of the US administration’s second attempt in the last three years to try him before a military commission, Australian national David Hicks pleaded guilty to one specification under the charge of "providing material support for terrorism".

This plea was made after years of indefinite detention, isolation and allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and after a day in which Hicks’ legal representation was reduced by the military judge overseeing the commission. After the plea, proceedings were adjourned and were expected to be reconvened later in the week after the details of the plea had been worked out.
David Hicks was one of 10 detainees to be charged under military commissions established under President George W. Bush’s Military Order of 13 November 2001. Those proceedings were halted in November 2004 by a US District Court judge, and ruled unlawful by the US Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in late June 2006. In early March 2007, David Hicks was the first person to be charged under the Military Commissions Act, legislation signed into law by President Bush on 17 October 2006 in response to the Hamdan ruling.

On 26 March 2007, David Hicks was arraigned on charges that he had never previously faced, in a system whose rules were issued two months ago. He came into the commission room in tan prison uniform and flip-flops with his hair hanging half way down his back. At his table was Major Dan Mori, his military defense counsel, Joshua Dratel, his civilian defense counsel, and Rebecca Snyder, his assistant military defense counsel.
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The military judge questioned David Hicks as to whether his plea had been influenced by the removal of two of his three attorneys earlier in the day. Hicks replied that it had not. However, after more than five years of virtually incommunicado military detention, and facing unfair trial procedures, serious questions must be asked about whether such a guilty plea can have been a purely volitional act.

The maximum penalty that David Hicks faces is life imprisonment, but the prosecution has said that it does not intend to argue for a life sentence. Under the terms of a reported arrangement, Hicks would serve any prison sentence in Australia. The guilty plea thus begins a process which will end in his return to his home country, some predict before the end of the year. In this regard, what transpired yesterday can also be seen as part of an exit strategy from a source of diplomatic tension rather than of judicial proceedings at which justice would either be done or be seen to be done.

For further information, see USA: Justice delayed and justice denied? Trials under the Military Commissions Act, AI Index: AMR 51/044/2007, March 2007,http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510522007

When justice is served (and it will be, eventually) who do you think is going to get stuck paying the billions if not trillions in reparations owed to these "enemy combatants" and their survivors?

Ain't gonna be KBR, Exxon or Blackwater, that's for sure.

Outstanding. H.R. 1234 is the bill that needed to be sent to this arrogant president. When he vetoes the supplemental bill, then send him H.R. 1234 instead. It's the right thing to do.