Sodomized Detainee

[karlos]

"Repeatedly Beaten, sodomized and forced into painful positions during interrogations", Australian Guantanamo Detainee's plea deal angers legal experts. If Hicks was such a menace, critics argue, why did he get just nine months?
LATIMES - Sun, 1 Apr 2007 06:26:32 GMT

The first war-crimes trial here drew outrage Saturday from legal experts who described it as a perversion of the rule of law that may fatally discredit the Pentagon's already disparaged handling of terrorism suspects.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is one of Washington's closest allies in the war on terrorism, and his Liberal Party had been flagging in this election year because of public resentment of Hicks' being held without charges at Guantanamo for more than five years.
Bringing his case to the war-crimes tribunal first, and before all the procedural guidance was ready, left the impression with many legal analysts that Crawford stepped in to do Howard a favor — at the expense of the commissions' credibility.

The Hicks deal followed by only a day Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' expression of concern before a congressional committee that because of Guantanamo's reputation in the world, the tribunal verdicts were going to lack credibility.

Friday's "machinations" in the Hicks trial and international reaction to the hand-slap sentence "suggest the accuracy of Gates' Thursday testimony about global perceptions of the military trials held at Guantanamo," said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias.

Legal analysts condemned the first completed case as fresh evidence that the detention and prosecution are unjust and immoral.

"From the beginning, the Hicks proceedings have illustrated everything that's wrong with these military commissions," said Maureen Byrnes, executive director of Human Rights First.

"The plea deal in particular has the taint of coerced statements and secrecy. The deal effectively censors anything Mr. Hicks might allege about what he says he suffered and implausibly characterizes the last five years of his detention as justified under the laws of war."

As a condition for the light sentence, Hicks was compelled to state that he has never been "illegally treated" in U.S. custody. He also had to promise not to bring any legal actions against U.S. officials or citizens for any reason.

"Add in the widespread perception that the plea deal was in part the result of intense political and diplomatic pressures, and the conclusion is inescapable that these military commissions don't deal justice, they deny it," Byrnes said.

The prohibition against Hicks ever claiming he was "illegally treated" in U.S. custody contradicted sworn statements submitted in his attempt to obtain British citizenship and a more protective home government.

The statement to a British court said he had been repeatedly beaten, sodomized and forced into painful positions during interrogations.

Melbourne lawyer Robert Richter wrote in a commentary for Sunday's The Age newspaper of Melbourne that the Hicks trial was a sham that has wholly discredited the Pentagon's war-crimes process.

"The charade that took place at Guantanamo Bay would have done Stalin's show trials proud," Richter said. "First there was indefinite detention without charge. Then there was the torture, however the Bush lawyers, including his attorney general, might choose to describe it. Then there was the extorted confession of guilt."

Other legal analysts saw the nine-month term as suspiciously accommodating of Australia's election season as the deal keeps Hicks out of the public arena until just after the vote expected by December.

"It might just be a coincidence, but if it is, it's an amazing one," said Lex Lasry, who came to Guantanamo to observe the tribunal on behalf of the Law Council of Australia, the country's bar association.

"why was he given a sentence more appropriate for a drunk-driving offense?"