US finally agrees David Hicks is innocent

Richard Jackson writes that US finally agrees David Hicks is innocent.

Hicks’ problem with the media, he says, is that in the seven years he has been free, they continue to fixate on what he was doing in Afghanistan. Different media outlets continually tell him he has to answer this, before they will move on to other questions, such as his treatment at the hands of the US and Australia’s complicity in it.

Hicks spent five and a half years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, after being sold by the Northern Alliance to the US military in Afghanistan in December 2001. While in US custody he was subject to an array of torture techniques, including, beatings, his right hand being fractured, being deprived of sleep through constant noise and lighting, being threatened with rape and torture, being isolated and put in solitary confinement, being shackled and put in stress positions.

He still suffers from his injuries, reeling off the problems: left knee, right elbow, wrists.

Emphasis Mine

Back in 2005 while discussing the differing treatment of Hicks, Habib, and the Danes, the following comment was made:

The different treatment can be explained by the capitalist media and Australian government's keenness to condemn a left-wing government such as Laos, while slavishly applauding the attempts of the US to run roughshod over an Australian citizens rights.

The media has to follow the government's script of who is an official enemy. Hicks has to be presumed to be guilty of something other than adolescent stupidty. By persisting in this line of questioning, the media avoids the hard questions of why the Australian government is negligent in the defence of Australian citizens' right when the US government, but will move heaven and earth when the Indonesian government.

The unspoken answer, as always, is the sacrosant American Alliance. Everything is sacrificed upon the altar for this false god.