Aussie Pleads Guilty in Guantanamo Show Trial

A brief military tribunal convened in Guantanamo, Cuba on Monday night. At that time, Australian David M. Hicks pleaded guilty to one charge of material support for terrorism. That makes him the first inmate there to accept criminal responsibility for aiding terrorism in the five years the place has been used as a dumping ground for “illegal enemy combatants.” Maybe the fact that the presiding judge ruled two of his lawyers were not qualified to represent him and were removed from the case had something to do with it.

The Washington Post reported, “Much of Monday's legal wrangling dealt with Hicks's defense team. The presiding officer ruled that his two civilian attorneys were not qualified to represent him in court, in part because one refused to sign a form he felt would compromise his ethical responsibilities. The lawyers, Rebecca Snyder and Joshua Dratel, separately stormed out of the courtroom. ‘I’m shocked because I just lost another lawyer,’ Hicks said when Kohlmann asked if he wanted Dratel to remain at his defense table, even though he could not represent him. ‘What’s the sense of him sitting here if he’s not my lawyer and can’t represent me?”

Colonel Ralph H. Kohlmann, the military commission’s presiding officer (the Chief Kangaroo), will have to decide whether to accept the guilty plea along with a not guilty response to one specification of supporting terrorist acts. The prosecution offered evidence that he had met with Usama bin Laden while training in Afghanistan but none that he had actually killed anyone.

Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper wrote, “The one-time horse trainer was taken prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2001 while fighting with the Taliban. He had left Australia to join the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999, fighting for Albanian Muslims.” It is hard to believe that a rigged show trial was necessary to convict him for the 20 years prosecutors are likely to demand. Indeed, it wouldn’t have taken 5 years had he been tried at One Center Street in Manhattan by a civilian court.

His guilty plea, moreover, is designed to get him out of Guantanamo. The Herald Sun also reported, “A prisoner transfer deal with the US means Hicks will probably serve his sentence at Yatala jail, in his home town of Adelaide.” Brilliant policy in Washington, giving the guilty a better time of it than those whose guilt remains unproved.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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