Exporting Gag Orders from Gitmo
by Devilstower

After five years of holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without charges or trial, Australian David Hicks was sentenced after confessing to multiple changes related to terrorism. That the Bush administration treats this moment of justice hugely delayed and distorted as a source of pride, tells you all you need know about the administration.

However, there's more here than just the first prisoner rolling down the conveyor belt our new, oversight-free, justice system. Rather than showing that loyal Bushies are starting to swirl a dash of integrity into their daily bowl of oppression and obsessive secrecy, the Hicks case is a reason to be worried that all our worst fears about Guantanamo may well be true. The panel that tried Hicks was convinced that he had dealings with four separate terrorist organizations, and as a result sentenced him to seven years of further confinement. However, unknown even to the trial officials, a secret deal had been worked out.

Hicks was today sentenced to seven years jail, but will serve only nine months after the rest of the sentence was suspended.

What kind of deal had Hicks made? Did he offer to provide the names of hidden terrorists in the United States? Did he reveal Osama's secret hiding place? Did he help foil one of those vaguely-defined plots Bush is always alluding to?

Just what could a man who supposedly was involved in plotting attacks against the west both with the Taliban and al Qaeda have to offer? His silence.

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.

Hicks has to keep his mouth shut about the tribunal. About how he came to confess. And especially about his treatment at Guantanamo. There's an election coming up in Australia, and many people Down Under have suggested that Hicks has been ordered to keep a sock in it so as not to harm the chances of the Bush-worshipping Howard government.

Greens leader Bob Brown claimed the nine months sentence was a political farce. "This is more about saving Mr Howard's political hide than about justice for Hicks," he said in a statement.

However, convenient as Hicks' silence may be for Howard, there's a better chance the soon to be former detainee is being kept quiet not because of any events in Australia, but because of what others are saying about Guantanamo.

A prisoner held by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said he had confessed to several terrorist attacks and plots only because he had been tortured, according to a transcript of a hearing held on March 14 and released yesterday by the Pentagon.

Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri has been tagged as the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole, and he's often been used by the Bush administration as an example of the "worst of the worst" held at Guantanamo. However, al-Rahim claims that... actually, we don't know what he claimed. When asked to describe what had happened to him before a review panel, al-Rahim spoke at length on the different techniques that had been used to extract his multiple confessions.

The four-paragraph passage that followed in the transcript was redacted in six places, and the 36-page transcript, of a two-hour hearing, was redacted in many other places.

David Hicks may well be guilty of everything to which he confessed. Al-Rahid may be responsible for everything the Bush administration says and then some. But how can we ever know?

The corrosive effects of what's going on at Guantanamo Bay extend around the world. It's impossible that Americans should ever come to trust the results produced by the "heavily redacted" methods used there, or accepting of the rulings produced by the tribunals. For the rest of the world, Guantanamo is worse than a laughing stock -- it's a touchstone for America's disdain for any sense of common decency.

David Hicks may by an Australian, but what he found on the far side of the world was a kangaroo court. What possible reason could there be for sentencing him to silence if there is nothing to hide?