No justice, just rot
By Sue Dunlevy
January 05, 2007 12:00 Article from: The Daily Telegraph
WHEN David Hicks clocks up his fifth year imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay next Thursday he will have served a longer jail sentence than many drug dealers, sex offenders and even people who attempted murder. But unlike them he still will not have been tried for or even charged with any crime.
Let us be clear - David Hicks is no innocent angel. He trained with Islamic terrorists, fought with the Taliban and is even alleged to have met Osama bin Laden.
He's dangerous, misguided and has rejected the values of the country he grew up in.
So how has such a reprehensible man won the sympathy of the overwhelming majority of the Australian public?
It's because, unlike Hicks, Australians place a great deal of value in justice.
Fundamental to our legal system is the idea that you must be charged with a crime before you can be sent to prison; you are presumed innocent until proven guilty and have the right to defend yourself in a court.
Not one of these fundamental rights has been accorded to David Hicks.
A recent Newspoll found 91 per cent of Australians want Hicks tried fairly and quickly.
Fewer than one in four people think a US military commission will give him a fair trial and 70 per cent want him home even if he can't be tried here.
Church and community leaders have taken up his cause, a group of Government MPs is agitating on his behalf and this week our director of military prosecutions Brigadier Lyn McDade described his treatment as abominable.
The abuse of Hicks' legal rights is bought into stark relief when you consider he has already spent more time imprisoned than most Australians charged, tried, convicted and sentenced for serious crimes.
The average sentence for all crimes in NSW is six months.
Research by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics shows that the average length of imprisonment for sex offenders is three years.
Those found guilty of importing or exporting drugs serve on average 5.4 years in prison.
Manslaughter and driving causing death carries an average jail sentence of five years.
Conspiracy and attempts to commit murder attract average jail sentences of 4.6 years.
Hicks' military appointed lawyer Major Michael Mori says it might not be until 2009 that the US Supreme Court hands down its ruling on the legality of the new military commission set to try him.
By then Hicks will have been imprisoned for seven years - that's half the average sentence for murder in NSW.
The reason we have left the Americans to deal with Hicks is because the Government says he has committed no crime under Australian law.
It is like some bizarre parallel universe: He has to be kept in jail because he has not broken any laws here.
Even the Americans are finding it hard to pin down just what crimes Hicks committed.
It wasn't until June 2004, 21Ž2 years after they had captured him that they charged the former jackaroo with conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy.
It is alleged he joined the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999 and fought the Serbs who were then engaged in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against Muslims and later joined and trained with the terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.
He was taught assassination, bomb making, spying, sniping, kidnapping and ambush at an al-Qaeda training camp.
He is alleged to have armed himself with an AK-47 rifle and grenades after watching the September 11 attacks on television and to have travelled to Kunduz, Afghanistan, where he fought against coalition forces before being captured.
But these charges and the military commission which drew them up collapsed in June this year when the US Supreme Court ruled the commission unconstitutional.
The US Government has now set up a new military commission but there is no guarantee that it will not again be found to be illegal.
The inept handling of the Hicks case is now beginning to frustrate the Prime Minister John Howard and also his Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, who this week agreed that the delay in bringing Hicks to justice is very unreasonable.
Hicks has not so far been accused of harming or killing anyone and yet he has already served a longer jail term than people who have.
It is time now for justice to be seen to be done.