Overdue Process Cause For Outrage

by Phillip Adams - The Australian

Once in a while a court case puts an entire society on trial. J'accuse the French over Alfred Dreyfus and the US over O.J. Simpson. And Australia was not at its best during the trials and tribulations of Lindy Chamberlain. Each judicial scandal revealed the respective community's deepest, darkest prejudices.

But the trial that is trying our patience at the moment is the one that has not taken place: an unconscionable delay for which our political masters must be judged guilty. L'affaire Hicks.

Leading voices in the conservative chorus - the likes of well-known psychiatrist Alexander Downer and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Gerard Henderson - have no sympathy for the fellow. May he rot in Guantanamo and subsequently in hell.

How can people rot in hell? Perchance it's a mispronunciation of roast. Either way, David Hicks's road to hell is paved with the clumsiest of intentions. He's been damned before he's been convicted. For him, due process is grossly overdue process.

In a variation of water-boarding or snarling rottweilers, Hicks complains that prisoners at Guantanamo are tormented by photographs of the botched executions of Saddam Hussein and co. The happy snaps jailers pinned to the walls include those of Saddam being abused by the execution team and the accidental decapitation of a henchman.

With characteristic charm, the US military says they're there for the prisoners' "intellectual stimulation".

Let the appalling scenes from Iraq's gallows symbolise the total disgrace of the coalition's treatment of all prisoners. Having wiped their backsides on the Geneva Conventions, they've employed humiliation and a variety of tortures on prisoners in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib, while god knows what outrages took place in secret cells under the secret policy of rendition.

When covering - and largely praising - this country's leadership of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, I visited the new prison we'd built, all shiny-bright razor wire and dazzlingly white concrete. I hoped to talk to the captured or surrendered militia leaders who'd been terrorising and killing villagers. Access was refused but I discovered they were being kept in solitary confinement. One at a time, for just two hours a day, each was allowed out of his cell into a chicken coop of an exercise yard.

This was occurring at precisely the time of the Abu Ghraib revelations and I wrote and broadcast protests about the inhumane treatment. To his credit, RAMSI boss Nick Warner acted to improve conditions within 24 hours.

In the case of Hicks, whose incarceration is far more brutal, the PM, Downer and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock have had five years to act. And they've achieved nothing.

In a sense, the issue is not the mental state of Hicks. It is the mental state of John Howard, Downer and Ruddock. Their behaviour throughout this apparently endless scandal has verged on collective insanity. It's as if our Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Attorney-General are themselves trapped in Guantanamo, imprisoned by the US, denied legal access and constantly humiliated. Any attempts to resolve the Hicks scandal have been belated, half-hearted and useless.

All three gentlemen have, of course, prejudged Hicks. All three have defended the indefensible goings-on in Guantanamo and the US President's illegal treatment of prisoners. The trio has even discounted the US Supreme Court's concerns over the constitutionality of the military tribunals.

Which brings us to the long-awaited "new charges" replacing the old charges. Trouble is, one of the newies is an oldie, dumped after Supreme Court criticism. The other, on the face of it, is a bit of a stretch. But Howard would have been thankful if they'd charged Hicks with shoplifting or given him a wad of parking tickets. Perhaps he can also be hit with a huge bill for his food and accommodation, just like our asylum-seekers.

"Some people just can't handle detention," sneers Ruddock at talk of Hicks's deteriorating condition after five years in the slammer. Downer disagrees, insisting that Hicks is doing just fine, basing his psychoanalytic diagnosis on the report of a US official.

Our much-touted "special relationship" with the US administration hasn't worked. Odd that it did for Tony Blair, who got the British prisoners out of Cuba long ago. Perhaps the PM can take it up with Dick Cheney when he arrives. What are friends for?

It scarcely matters whether Hicks is guilty as charged, in a belated attempt by the US to recharge the case. The problem is beyond that. Hicks's treatment has been, to borrow an expression from the US Supreme Court, cruel and unusual. It has undermined every principle of justice and fair play and made a mockery of Australian sovereignty.

Alfred Dreyfus, O.J. Simpson, Lindy Chamberlain and David Hicks. A decidedly odd quartet. For good or ill, the others had their days in court. Hicks has only had his five years in jail.