Networked Knowledge - Media Report

This version of the report has been prepared by: Dr Robert N Moles
Underlining where it occurs is for editorial emphasis]

List of Australian, UK and USA miscarriage of justice cases
Article on Australian miscarriage of justice cases
Article on UK miscarriage of justice cases
Article on USA miscarriage of justice cases

On 30 December 2007 Steve Larkin of the Daily Telegraph / AAP reported “David Hicks must renounce terrorism, says human rights lawyer”.

He said that David Hicks won't be taken seriously until he renounces terrorism, a prominent human rights lawyer says. George Newhouse, who acted for wrongly-detained Australian citizens Vivian Alvarez and Cornelia Rau, said Hicks also had to renounce anti-Semitic views. He said Hicks needed to go further than his statement on release from jail yesterday when he said he wouldn't let Australians down. "He needs to go further and renounce the hateful and deeply anti-Semitic views he has espoused previously," Mr Newhouse said.

Hicks, 32, was freed from Adelaide's Yatala jail yesterday after completing a sentence for providing material support to terrorism. Hicks expressed anti-Semitic views in letters to family in 2000, which were read to the Federal Magistrates Court in Adelaide during a control order application earlier this month. "The western society is controlled by the Jews ... keeps Islam weak and in the Third World," Hicks wrote to his mother Sue King in 2000. In others letters to family, Hicks wrote that training with terrorist organisations was designed to ensure "the Western-Jewish domination is finished" and warned his father to ignore "the Jews' propaganda war machine".

Mr Newhouse, 45, is a prominent member of Sydney's Jewish community.  He is co-founder of the Jewish Labor forum, former mayor of Waverley, in Sydney's east, and was the Labor candidate for the seat of Wentworth in the recent federal election. He said Hicks needed to reassure Australians that his views had changed. "Hicks' views are an insult to all Australians and he must renounce them immediately," Mr Newhouse said.  "David Hicks claims that his plea bargain (with US military prosecutors) and the conditions of his release from Guantanamo Bay restricts him from talking about a lot of issues, but surely they do not stop him from coming forward to renounce terrorism and anti-Semitism. "Until he does that, his words cannot be taken seriously.  

"David Hicks should appreciate the fact that he has been repatriated to his homeland where he can benefit from a robust democracy, the rule of law and an independent judiciary," he said.  "David Hicks needs to reciprocate by reaffirming the basic values of our nation and the right to all Australians, including Jews, to live here and abroad in peace and safety."

Natasha Stott Despoja in the Sunday Telegraph reported “Hicks will never be a free man”.

She said that despite leaving Yatala yesterday amid a media frenzy - and being out of detention for the first time in six years - David Hicks is not a free man. He is subject to a stringent control order and a gag. Hicks endured more than five years in the hell-hole that is Guantanamo Bay - often in solitary confinement - and for most of that time without being charged. When eventually charged, he did not face a fair trial but a flawed legal process. That he was allowed to languish overseas, abandoned by his government while being used as a political punching bag back home (until it began to bite politically), is an indictment on the previous federal government. Nevertheless, this undermining of legal principles is now being perpetuated by the Rudd government with the Attorney-General's rubber stamp of the AFP's application for a control order. By giving the green light to the control order, the Government failed its first test on national security and has shown itself to be little more than a clone of its predecessor.

Control orders are unjustified and unnecessary. Their use substitutes the ordinary criminal justice system with a parallel system run by the executive. The AFP even admitted that if David Hicks were to attempt to engage in terrorist activity, that the existing criminal law and traditional surveillance techniques would apply. Hicks's order obliges him to remain in his place of residence between midnight and 6am and report to police three times a week. The AFP said this measure was necessary because monitoring his compliance would be too resource-intensive and would place an operational burden on the AFP.

Two things emerge from this: if Hicks was a genuine threat, surely resources would not be an issue?; and the Howard government invested $8 billion in counter-terrorism so, if we can't spend some of this on someone who is deemed a threat, then what are we spending it on? At the court hearing, Hicks was not allowed to present evidence and the order was not opposed by his legal team. Yet, the AFP proceeded to outline in excruciating detail everything they had on file about Hicks. This included evidence that was six years old, untested, judged against a civil standard of proof and, in part, gained through interrogation at Guantanamo Bay where Mr Hicks did not have the benefit of legal advice.

Despite the sensationalising of some elements of this by the media, the most alarming aspect was what the evidence did not contain:
No threat ever made in relation to Australia;
No crime ever committed against Australian law;
No evidence that Hicks's action resulted in damage to any person;
No evidence of Hicks's state of mind in the last six years.

Hicks has expressed a desire to get on with his life and he has pledged not to let the Australian public down. But the ordeal continues: a confirmation hearing into the control order takes place on February 18. Hicks's lawyer, David McLeod, says Hicks will abide by the decision and is glad to be before a properly constituted court for the first time. What a sad reflection on what has occurred over the past six years: not necessarily even to this man but to cherished principles in our democracy and how these are vulnerable to politicians and governments desperate to prove their national security credentials. That Hicks had no choice but to appear publicly yesterday with discernible number plates on his cars means his place of residence (and, therefore, the nearest cop shop) can be ascertained. When it is, it will be the latest attack on what human rights this man has left and, once again, exposes how we have jettisoned some fundamental human rights in the war on terror.

Senator Natasha Stott Despoja is a South Australia Senator since 1995 and the Attorney-General's spokesperson for the Democrats.

Top of Page