From Andy Worthington Author and Journalist
By Andy Worthington

As if there was any doubt that politics, rather than justice, drives much of the US administration’s Guantánamo policy, Harper’s magazine reports that a US military officer has shed light on the murky process involved in the release of Australian detainee David Hicks from Guantánamo in May.

Hicks, a convert to Islam who was sold to US forces after the fall of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, was sent back to Australia to serve a nine-month sentence after accepting a plea bargain during his trial by Military Commission in March. Commentators at the time were deeply suspicious of the deal, as it involved him renouncing well-documented claims that he was tortured and abused in American custody. By agreeing to drop these allegations, and to admit providing “material support for terrorism,” he was given a sentence far shorter than that which prosecutors had first mooted – up to 20 years, according to some reports, which would have been comparable to the draconian sentence imposed on John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” in 2002 – and was allowed to fulfil his dearest wish: to be freed from Guantánamo, and to return home.

According to the officer who spoke to Harper’s, Hicks’ deal was arranged by Vice President Dick Cheney and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. “One of our staffers was present when Vice President Cheney interfered directly to get Hicks’ plea bargain deal,” the officer said. “He did it, apparently, as part of a deal cut with Howard. I kept thinking: this is the sort of thing that used to go on behind the Iron Curtain, not in America.” He added, pointedly, “And then it struck me how much this entire process had disintegrated into a political charade. It’s demoralizing for all of us.”

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