David Hicks is an Australian citizen incarcerated in Guantanemo for the last five years, and was only actually charged with so-called terrorism offences in the last couple of weeks. He might finally see his day in court in the not too distant future with a bit of luck. :rolleyes:
During those years, David has been represented by Major Michael Mori. Mori has become a bit of a minor hero here because of his willingness to publicly challenge the legality and morality of the military commission system, and his acknowledgement that the terror charges and the judicial process are bullshit.
However, this has now come back to bite him (and David Hicks) on the bum.
If I was aghast and disgusted before, I am speechless now. If Mori is sacked as defence counsel for David Hicks, it will totally fuck up an already totally fucked up case. Any sympathy I had for the ‘War on Terror’ (which has been rapidly eroded in recent years I admit) has completely gone down the gurgler when governments conspire to deny justice for political ends.
Well, the guy is not a civilian lawyer, he’s a member of the JAG corps. In addition to representing his clients, he also has to conduct himself as a military officer, and that includes not mouthing off about the President.
Whether he actually did or didn’t is for the court system to decide, of course; I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of the case. It could just be a procedural ploy.
After all, this is just some guy your government took into custody from a Northern Alliance warlord who was paid to hand over Taliban, and who swept up and handed over anyone they thought the credulous American forces might accept.
This is just some guy who’s a citizen of one of America’s closest allies in the “war on terror,” and who was incarcerated for five years before any charges were filed.
This is just some guy who is the first Guantanamo detainee to be formally charged under the new US military commission system, set up last year after the Bush’s administration’s previous commissions were found by the US Supreme Court to violate the UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions.
This is just some guy who is being charged with providing material support for terrorism, despite the fact that this crime was not actually passed into American law until last year, four years after his capture. The other charge against him, which was attempted murder, has been dismissed after the US Military Commission judge decided that it could not be sustained.
Why should you know about this case at all? There’s no reason at all that it should be a major story for the American media.
Gee, sorry I offended you by not making myself in expert in the UCMJ and military court procedure. I guess I’ll go drop what I’m doing right now and head off to law school. My bad.
I’d be interested to know how far this rule goes. It seems like there’d be conflict between the rule of not using contemptuous language and disagreeing with the accusations in court. “The charges against my client are ludicrous!” - pretty drama’d up, but would it be acceptable?
Actually, my comment was intended to be about the American media, and the general level of attention that is being paid to this case, as i thought was pretty clear by the last sentence in my post.
After all, we’ve been told by the Bush administration for the past five years that the people in Guantanamo are all terrorists, and that they are being imprisoned for the good of global peace.
Yet, after the administration’s own military commissions were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, and had to be overhauled, and we now have the very first Guantanamo detainee being brought up on charges under the new commission, hardly anyone seems to be paying any attention.
Given the importance of this issue for the past half-decade, this case should be on the front page of the news. The Bush administration should be holding press conferences to show how justice is being done. Yet neither of those things are happening. Maybe because the administration has made such a fucking balls-up of the whole thing, and the Hicks case demonstrates just how nefarious they’ve been. It’s no wonder they don’t really want to draw attention to it; i just hoped the media would be a little more vigilant.
Is Anna Nicole still dead? I am not sure, I don’t think the news has covered the story in the last 30 seconds and you never know when a meteor is going to come close to the earth and re-animate her corpse.
The only reason Hicks happens to be the first Guantanemo detainee to face court is that our PM, John Howard, has been facing an increasing level of domestic hostility about the case and is keen to have things ‘resolved’ by the end of the year when a federal election is to be held. A quiet (desperate) word with Bush has ensured David Hicks is first cab off the rank.
My feeling (and that of the majority of folks who condemn this schemozzle) is that Bush and Howard are quite keen (read: desperate again) to ensure that a guilty verdict is returned. It will vindicate all their efforts and prove to the community that Guantanemo was a necessary and successful tool in the War on Terror. Howard has the extra burden of showing the electorate here that his lack of concern for the civil rights of an Aussie citizen were justified because, hey, he was a terrorist after all, see???
While Mori may well be out of military line badmouthing the Prez and the policies, how in the hell is he supposed to defend his client when the very basis of that defence is that the charges are complete bullshit and the military commission system (with, for example, its reliance upon such things as coercive testimony and heresay evidence) has been created for the explicit purpose of getting a guilty plea, no matter that natural justice is not served.
Sacking Mori will just retard the defence case even further, and guarantee that Hicks’ day in court will be a brief one that should send a shiver down EVERYONES spine about the future of justice in western societies. IOW, if they can do it to Hicks, then they can do it to just about anyone they damnwell choose.
Well, there’s another thread. Do mass media types bloviate on about how Obama doesn’t always wear a tie because they’re too lazy to do research into something substantive, or do they avoid investigating this administration because they fear reprisals from the White house?
There actually has been some reporting, just not enough real digging into substantive policy stuff gets the big airplay. And I’m not sure it isn’t fear on the part of the parent companies.
It wasn’t anything specific like calling Bush a fuckhead or anything.
Mori has been an outspoken critic of Guantanemo-Incarceration-Without-Charge. This might be because as defense-counsel for an inmate, until any charges are actually laid, it is impossible to act as a defender of the accused, yes?
He has regularly challenged the practices of the newly established Military Commission, noting that their evidentiary protocols are inferior to those accepted by any other western court of law would thus be deemed as ‘kangaroo courts’ in any other situation.
He has also rejected the legality of the only charge actually laid against Hicks (providing material support for terrorism) on the grounds that it is a retrospective law that was not (as mhendo noted) illegal at the time Hicks was imprisoned in Guantanemo.
It’s not quite in so many words, but basically he’s telling folks that the system is completely FUCKED!! I think that is what the military authorities are getting their knickers in a twist about.
I dunno if you are getting this coverage in the US, but in Australia, with David Hicks at the forefront of media attention, everything Mori says or does is headline news.
As I mentioned in the above post, Mori (by his own acknowledgement now) has a ‘conflict of interest’ between his service as a paid member of the US military and as the assigned defense-counsel for David Hicks. I honestly think that the US PTB thought they’d have a tame one on their hands when they assigned Mori as Hicks’ counsel…except that Mori has now realised (thanks to the David Hicks debacle) that the whole setup is corrupt and diseased and a complete travesty of what we (thought) we considered true justice in the western world.
I have to say I read the situation a little differently from kambuckta. I think the suggestion that Mori might be removed from the case is Mori’s idea. Here’s why:
The US wants to try or punish Hicks. They don’t want to release him without some finding against him or some legal admission from him. Part of this is because he is the white guy. But it doesn’t want to hurt the Australian government.
The Australian government has been quite happy for Hicks to stay where he is and has not asked for his return. But now it finds itself under real political pressure on this. It’s a government in some trouble in many areas and is looking to get out of trouble on this one.
Assuming that no information comes to light showing that Hicks actually did something like a plant a bomb, there are only two ways that the Australian government can get out the Hicks trouble:
(a) there is some pseudo-trial and Hicks is found guilty and returned to Australia to serve out some sentence or be released on parole;
(b) a deal is done and Hicks pleads to something and comes home to serve time or be paroled.
The key thing here is that to be of use to the Australian government, this absolutely has to happen before the next election. Before Christmas really.
3a is unlikely to happen because someone is going to challenge the new system before the US courts. The new system may or may not pass muster, but a challenge will mean a delay. So 3a is looking a bit sick.
So the Australian government wants a deal with Hicks and wants Mori to stop putting pressure on it to ask for Hicks’ release and start talking plea bargain. So pressure of various sorts is being brought to bear on Mori.
But he isn’t having it. What he’s saying here is “I’m going to keep agitating for Hicks’ release, and if you keep saying that I’m acting inappropriately I’ll remove myself from the case due to a conflict and you’ll have to appoint another military lawyer.” The point is that appointing another lawyer would screw 3b as an option: the new lawyer would have to familiarise himself with the case, get instructions from his client, consult widely with the Australian Bar and Hicks’ local lawyers and families, consult with US civilian lawyers about the legality of the military commissions etc etc. Any diligent lawyer would do those things, and there’s no point - politically - in appointing a non-diligent one.
This would involve delaying any plea until after the Australian elections, rendering the whole thing useless for the Australian government.
So this is not the US military really trying to bully Mori - this is Mori asserting his bargaining position. He thinks he can get a better deal or - better still - cause the Australian government to cauterise the wound and just ask for Hicks to be released. Major Mori is a formidable advocate.
[edit: here’s an a newer story on the issue. I think it fits pretty well with my interpretation:
Thanks hawthorne. I read that article this morning and it did put quite a different perspective on the whole matter, especially noting that it was Mori’s own ‘solution’ to stand aside. The phrasing in the first Age article I quoted was far more damning of Colonel Morris. Naughty, naughty Age.
However, this statement:
is just not going to happen. There is no way that Howard will be able to swallow such a bitter pill, regardless of how politically expedient it would be in the run up to the election. And I doubt it would be a valuable act anyway: releasing Hicks would further prove that the charges and judicial processes were a sham, and that Howard has for FIVE years allowed and encouraged the screw-ups. The electorate is not that dumb.
And as you well know, Howard is a proud man who would rather gnaw his arm off than admit that he was wrong.
Mori ain’t going to get Hicks a release unless it IS done via a plea bargain with time served in Guantanemo taken into account. However, as you mentioned, Mori is a formidable opponent, and I don’t believe he is just going to let Hicks meander away into the sunset like that: this is going to be a test case of biblical proportions, and he is going to want to go the whole nine yards to get the case thrown out of court paving the way for all the other detainees who are yet to be charged and tried.
