David Hicks, the Australian who pleaded guilty this week to lending material support to terrorism, which is not a recognized war crime, will serve 9 months. But it took more than five years of his liefe for the government to come up with this. By the time his is freed on December 30, 2007, he will have spent more than six years behind bars in the legal black hole otherwise known as Guantanamo Bay (or as Vice President Cheney sees it, "living in the tropics.") Bush will hail this as a victory in the war on terrorism. But if it's a victory for anyone, it's for Hicks: he will get his life back.
Australian David Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner, pleaded guilty earlier this week to one charge of providing material support for terrorism, which is not a war crime, but rather a newfangled vague crime under the Patriot Act. Hicks will leave the legal black hole otherwise known as Guantanamo Bay (Vice President Cheney calls it "living in the tropics") by the end of May and will be freed on December 30. He had faced a life sentence.
But the tragic -- and illegal -- thing about this story is that when all is said and done, he will have been jailed, often in solitary confinement, without charge, counsel or judicial review for the worse part of 6 years. And to add insult to injury, the 9 months to which he is sentenced does not include time served; in other words, he has spent more than five years in detention for a crime worthy of only 9 months of incarceration.
The military commission panel last night actually sentenced him to seven years in prison, on top of the five he has already spent languishing at Guantanamo Bay. But the convening authority had already agreed to suspend all but nine months of the term.
The Washington Post and other MSM have claimed that the plea "marks a victory for the Bush Administration." http://www.washingtonpost.com/... This logic, which we've seen before, is that since Bush secured a conviction in the first case pursued under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, this is proof that the Commissions work!
But we don't really know that the military commissions system works -- and from the little we have seen of it, it's riddled with problems -- because Hicks pleaded guilty on the case's first day. This case was heard only because Australian Prime Minister John Howard, facing re-election shortly, exerted tremendous political influence on the U.S. to return Hicks to Australia.
Mr. Hicks made an illusory "choice" under the panoply of bad options before him. Reminder: Hicks is the FIRST detainee out of HUNDREDS who have been held for more than FIVE YEARS at Gitmo to have his case "adjudicated," if that's what you want to call these lopsided proceedings that allow hearsay, coerced testimony, and secret evidence.
A quick primer (and remember, this is under the new, improved commissions, after the Supreme Court struck down the original ones): the Military Commissions Act permits evidence obtained through physical abuse or coercion. Judges are allowed to keep evidence secret from a prisoner's lawyer if the government deems it classified -- especially problematic for an Administration that classifies anything on paper. The new rules broadly define secret evidence as “any information or material that has been determined by the United States government . . . to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.” This "classified" information can include interrogation methods, which makes it impossible to prove torture or abuse -- something that could certainly be exculpatory with regard to, and at a minimum would cast serious doubt upon, the validity of the charges.
Even if a President could be trusted to conduct the military tribunals fairly and carefully, Bush has shown time and again that he can't be trusted to do that.
David Hicks' guilty plea is as much an indictment of the bogus military commissions, as it is an indictment of Mr. Hicks.
Bush hailed Hick's conviction as victory. But if it's a victory for anyone, it is for David Hicks: He will get his life back.