Hicks gets nine month sentence

[AussieDave]

Source: The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Queensland)

A US military tribunal has given Australian David Hicks a jail sentence of nine months for a charge of supporting terrorism, a military judge said.

After a panel of military officers recommended a maximum sentence of seven years, judge Colonel Ralph Kohlmann revealed that a plea deal for Hicks required that "any portion of a sentence in excess of nine months" be suspended.

He is to serve the sentence in Australia.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21479623-5003402,00.html

---

Breaking about 20 minutes ago.....

Also at http://www.skynews.com.au/story.asp?id=161852

and as breaking news on http://abcnews.go.com/

[mike_c]

1. fucking pigs...

...kept him locked up in Afghanistan, then Guantanamo, for five years without charge, denied him fundamental human rights, abused him physically and psychologically, and used his supposed fearfulness as an excuse to debase my country's founding principles of justice. This is as good as an "oops, sorry about that."

[rodeodance]

2. but he has to agree NOT to file suit that he was tortured also.

[AussieDave]

4. I heard on ABC (Australia) radio this morning

that he couldn't speak to the media for 12 months, couldn't profit from any books about his time in Gitmo, etc. etc.

I wonder does this mean he can't speak to his father ?? Because sure as hell Terry Hicks will relay ANYTHING his son has to say about his treatment to the waiting press.

I'm suspicious John Howard has something to do with all this, but if anything gets out about Hicks' mistreatment Howard will live to regret it.

[Name removed]

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[MannyGoldstein]

3. Nine Months Plea Deal

This sounds absurd - I'm thinkin' that the evidence was almost nonexistent, or really stupid.

[Kagemusha]

5. Sounds like a gift wrapped up for Howard

I sigh. If this helps him get re-elected, Australia will be all the poorer.

[AussieDave]

6. I don't think this will help Howard at all

His rabid supporters (not unlike the magic "30% who still worship Shrub) will be satisfied and say "move along, nothing to see here".

But if stories trickle out about Hicks treatment at Gitmo, it could very well be a death by a thousand cuts for Howard.

Whatever Hicks may have done, it seems relatively trivial and his long imprisonment has offended the typical Australian's sense of "a fair go". Coupled with the overwhelming unpopularity of the Iraq war and I think things just may get worse for Howard.

[Kagemusha]

9. I cannot speak to the effectiveness. I just smell motive.

Not like the issue of getting him back like this hasn't been in the media.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Hope this man finally gets home someday, and it won't be with the help of his own Prime Minister.

I could NOT believe the bastard simply threw him to the wolves.

[Eugene]

10. Wait a minute! If Hicks was supposedly dangerous enough to be held at Gitmo...

how does he get a suspended sentence?

He was too dangerous to be tried as an ordinary criminal,
but he will be out in 9 months? It just doesn't add up.
It would have been a whole lot cleaner to hand him over
to Australian justice if only to make things semi-legit.

[Violet_Crumble]

15. Why they couldn't and wouldn't hand him over to Australian justice...

...is because he hadn't broken any Australian law....

[Vidar]

11. Wouldn't be too bad, except for the five years of torture he's already

endured.

[Solly Mack]

12. He's served his purpose - Bush gets to parade his guilty plea

and point to it as "proof" he is right to hold people indefinitely, the continuing need for GTMO - and then claim he got a "fair trial"

and no charges of abuse will be brought because Hicks had to agree to withdraw the allegations

[ProudDad]

13. Frankly, this is about as close to "justice"

as the united mistakes of america can serve out.

He "gets off" with torture and 5 years in hell and 7 months in Australia (be still you wags - no 7 months in Australia jokes)...

------------------------

Contrast with this american "justice":

"AUSTIN, March 28 -- Civil rights activists are rallying around a 15-year-old black girl who has been in a high-security juvenile detention center for a year for shoving a hall monitor at her school and whose sentence was just extended for what authorities call possession of contraband: an extra pair of socks and a plastic foam cup."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802196.html

"In Paris, Texas, last year, a 14-year-old White girl burns down her family's home. Her punishment? Probation. In the same town three months later, a 15-year-old Black girl, Shaquanda Cotton, is sentenced to seven years in prison for pushing a hall monitor at her high school."

http://www.bet.com/NR/exeres/33F73FAC-9AB1-4EED-93F1-8605ED01767C.htm?wbc_purpose=Basic&WBCMODE=PresentationUnpublished&mb=1


I guess the only thing worse than being an Australian Taliban is being a black teenager in Texas, eh???

[Violet_Crumble]

17. Jurists deliver damning indictment of the process

AN EXTRAORDINARY chorus of jurists has expressed doubt as to whether David Hicks' plea was a free admission of guilt rather than simply a desperate response to coercion.

Representatives from the Law Council of Australia, the Law Institute of Victoria, civil liberties group Liberty Victoria, the International Commission of Jurists, the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Monash University and the University of NSW said that Hicks had been subjected to exceptional pressures.

The most damning interpretation of the plea was delivered by Liberty Victoria president Brian Walters, SC, who described it as "a result not of a free choice, but of no choice".

"After five years in shocking conditions, with no right to see his family … any ray of light showing a way out would be taken, and it has been."

Mr Walters estimated it would have taken Hicks at least two more years to beat the charges if contested, and described yesterday as a "day of deep shame" for Australia.

"This does not get the Australian Government off the hook. This shows how far they have sunk from upholding human rights," Mr Walters said.

"No American citizen would be subjected to these military commissions, and yet our Government was happy for our citizen to be subject to it."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/jurists-deliver-damning-indictment-of-the-process/2007/03/27/1174761470898.html

[Violet_Crumble]

18. American justice on trial as Hicks has day in court

EVEN with a partial victory under the Pentagon's belt, Defence Secretary Robert Gates believes President George Bush's war crimes court in Guantanamo lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

The US is poised to win its first conviction at its first war crimes tribunal since World War II with a formal, detailed guilty plea expected overnight from David Hicks.

But while the Bush Administration scored its first certified terrorist, a scalp it can hold up to the world to say the whole Guantanamo Bay and military commissions process is working, Mr Gates has not even worked out the rules for civilian attorneys.

This effectively makes a role impossible for Hicks' most senior lawyer, New York defence attorney Joshua Dratel.

It was, as one senior defence lawyer put it, like a train leaving the station without the tracks having been laid.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/03/30/1174761752068.html

[deminks]

19. Diary on Kos says he also got a 12 month gag order

because of the election in Australia this year.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/31/111922/159

Mr Downer rejected suggestions the sentence, which includes a 12-month gag order, was made for the convenience of the government in an election year.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/mixed-reactions-to-hickss-sentence/2007/03/31/1174761804155.html