Australia’s refugee problem has attracted global attention. This from the New York Times.
Why is Hicks any less dangerous now?
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When it comes to David Hicks, the Rudd government should either hang its head in shame for succumbing to base political opportunism last year, or feel like it’s been made to look a fool by the Australian Federal Police. Twelve months ago, lawyers for the AFP told a Federal Magistrates Court hearing that Hicks was so dangerous he should be subject to a control order the conditions attached to which meant that it could not be described as anything other than draconian. But now the AFP says all is well with Mr. Hicks, and it won’t be applying to renew the order. It is hard not to conclude that those, like former Democrats senator Natasha Stott-Despoja, who argued that the case for a control order on the mentally and physically drained former Guantanamo Bay prisoner was simply a political stunt and not grounded in any real assessment of risk were absolutely right. In twelve months we have gone from curfew, restrictions on travel, reporting to the police, lists of people with whom Hicks was forbidden to make contact, and a gag on Hicks talking to the media about his story, to total freedom for Hicks. This time last year lawyers for the AFP told the Federal Magistrates Court hearing in Adelaide that because Hicks had allegedly trained with Al Qa’ida in 2001 this meant that he had “the capability to execute plans for terrorist acts or to provide instruction to others in this regard”. And, the Court accepted the AFP line that “the fact that Mr. Hicks has trained in LeT and Al-Qa’ida training camps, and associated with senior Al-Qa’ida figures in Afghanistan may lead aspirant and current extremists to seek out his skills and experiences to guide them in achieving their potentially extremist objectives.” Without a control order, the Federal Magistrates Court said, “Mr Hicks could be exploited or manipulated by terrorist groups. Due to his knowledge and skills, he is a potential resource for the planning or preparation of a terrorist act”. All very heavy allegations indeed. So why the change of heart on the part of the AFP and Mr McClelland in the past year? What has Hicks done that convinced the AFP and Mr McClelland that they no longer have to keep tabs on a man whom they thought was still so dangerous to his fellow Australians last year? Not much at all, is the answer to the second question. As to the first, perhaps the Attorney-General has decided that he was sold a pup by the AFP last year and that the persecution of David Hicks has gone on long enough. The application for a control order on Hicks last year was nothing more than a PR stunt by the Rudd government and the AFP. Yesterday’s about face and soothing words from the Attorney-General about allowing Hicks to get on with his life in peace, and the AFP’s 180 degree change of heart are testament to that fact.
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21 Comments
Well spoken Ruth and spot on.
The niaivity of the Dawood Hicks groupies here is staggering.
Let me quote a seargant Major from my favourite British series: If we want to charge all idiots, there would be no end to it..’.
Mr. David Sanderson, please do not put labels… as I, like many Liberals, am very much from the Right of the Libs. But, unlike Mr. Howard, I do believe in habeas corpus, democratic values and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is NOT me who is ‘pathetic’. That is why the Liberal Party is in disarray and cannot possibly get out of the mess Mr. Howrd and Ruddock got our country into. Strongly recommend the study of ‘Operation Storm’ in the Balkans. It was not Hicks who is responsible for the Balkan disaster. But I would definitely slap him for having joined the KLA of Kosovo, an organisation, still on the USA list of terrorists and yet, having all the support of the USA.
OK, we do not hold soldiers responsible for the orders. But Hicks did not kill anyone. Australian soldiers did do the killings. Now, why all these people , like you, all concerned, do not demand full inquiry on what Hicks did or did not do??? It is like ‘I know you are not a virgin but I do not want any proof’. Give us evidence of all the ‘abominable things’ Hicks is responsible for. Only then, I will believe you, providing you have all the support of the Australian Court’s findings. Cheers.
I assume that the above Marilyn is the same Marilyn who claims that the US was funding the Taliban until mid-2001 in order to be able to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. if you are as deluded as that then you are deluded enough to believe that Hicks is merely a misunderstood and mistreated boy.
Hicks fought for an extremist Islamic outfit in Bosnia and the used the talents he acquired there to fight as a Taliban soldier.That is more than enough to condemn him - he sought to kill and destroy, and no doubt did so successfully, on behalf of some the most nefarious forces this poor old world of ours has produced. Nothing he has said has dispelled the charge that he was willing to work for al Quaeda; he was just unwilling to participate in suicide missions.
I am happy to accept that he has reformed and is no longer a threat. I do not accept that his heinous past actions should have gone unpunished.
I would not judge the AFP so harshly. They did make rather a mess of the terrorism thing, but they had a lot of help from the experts in the house on the hill. I have had some dealings with the AFP over child protection issues. The police persons I dealt with were excellent. They handled the matter in a very sensitive way, communicated with me frequently and after passing on the matter to their colleagues interstate I found that they were just as good as the people I had spoken to in the ACT.
What really needs replacement in this country is the political system and their fellow travellers of the forth estate. We have a system that is beholden to Private wealth at the expense of the common good. Until that changes we will never get a top class police and affordable judicial system, a top class taxation system or a decent environment.
I’m hoping htat I might retain a bit of pride in Australia soon: I don’t think it’ll be Kev who does it, but at least we’re going the right way. Certainly, Hicks isn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but for goodness’s sake, there was no way he was ever a threat, particularly after 5 years in Gitmo. Dismantle the AFP, which was, after all, set up by Billy Hughes to protect him from egg-throwing ‘terrorists’. Replace it with a decent law enforcement agency.
Everything you say is true but I don’t think his control order conditions were all that onerous.
I had no trouble at his age observing that curfew and prohibition of overseas travel.
The twice weekly police visits are the only things which would have altered my life at his age.
Not that John Howard or any of his silent knights at the cabinet table would admit it but the Howard Oppression was without doubt our nation’s darkest era. David Hicks is just one of JWH’s many political disasters as the mephastopheles for Bennelong. The minute he realised yet another cataclysmic political failure would have him out of Kirribilli by Christmas he couldn’t get Hicks out of Guantanamo fast enough. They were a gutless group in a national governance that no doubt will have its day in the international courts. John and Janette in my view sit well with Nicolae and Elena - the Bonny and Clyde of the southern hemisphere.
I know this is Friday night but Sanderson on the end is beyond belief. The reason we activated for Hicks is BECAUSE WE KNOW ABSOLUTELY THAT HE DID NOT DO ANYTHING.
It is cretins like Sanderson that are scarier than Hicks.
So you think the AFP is being vindictive? That’s not the only inference you can draw. Last year, the AFP knew only what the Americans told them about the risk to society posed by David Hicks. Probably not much of an assessment given that they tortured sick old men in Guantanamo on no evidence but that they had been dobbed in by their village enemies.
A year later, after Hicks has shown himself a model citizen, the AFP have that year’s observations of behaviour on which to base a decision. That’s the logical inference. Don’t blame them for doing a proper job.
I agree that the way Australia left a citizen to languish for 5 years in legal limbo and then allowed a sham trial was awful to watch and totally incompetent on the part of the former Minister for Foreign Affairs. However, the task of the AFP is to act in a way consistent with its mandate - it can’t make amends to Hicks for what Australia’s government allowed to happen to him.. That’s for the Rudd Government to do, if anyone. And what is a new government to do? Short of relying on its own intelligence agency - somewhat risky in view of the whole WMD shemozzle - it stands to reason that it needs observations on home turf as an evidentiary basis for a decision about David Hicks.
I find this finger pointing at the ALP to be pathetic. We all know they stuffed up with the case of Dr Haneef. But the media agenda of putting the boot in at every opportunity is wearing thin.
I understand that David Hicks may be a worry to some of ‘concerned’ Australians. After all, he has access to nuclear power, bombers, military helicopters, artillery, weapon arsenals, Pine Gap, satellites, Security Council, oil &money markets, and … fraudulent banks. By keeping him under control we can easily secure:
- withdrawing from Iraq
- win Afghanistan,
- prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons
- rescue Georgia
- solve all the ME problems
- fix our ailing economies, boost employment and avoid inflation
- justice for all
- everlasting peace on our planet.
Can’t understand why Americans let him go.
Yeah, we better keep an eye on him.
It’s called ‘separation of powers’ and no party will admit Australia hasn’t moved all that far from those years up there in the Pineapple State where Joh Bjelke-Petersen admitted he hadn’t a clue what it meant. Under MP law - Howard’s Law - the judiciary simply applied and exacted cruel acts on its own people. David Hicks served his purpose as part of the Howard Ruddock Andrews PR machine. Mr McLelland and Rudd need to tell us why Hicks is as harmless as a fly this year and not last and quit trying to save the face of the AFP.
It would be interesting to speculate abouts Hick’s fate if Howard had not been beaten by Rudd and if that champion of liberty and freedom Phillip Ruddock had been the responsible minister.
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It was the whipping up of xenophobic hysteria and fear of muslims by Howard and Ruddock that created the environment in which McClelland had to do the fudge. Just imagine the response of the Murdock rags and the shock jocks if he had let Hicks out without some penance.
I have said it before and say it again , McClelland is incompetent and the position of Attorney General is beyond him. Like his collegue, the Communications Minister, they are sitting ducks for embarrasing the Rudd Government and a decent Opposition would be taking the pair of them to the cleaners.
The David Hicks affair is a stain on both the previous Govt, who used him for their own political agenda and the slack incompetence of the Rudd Govt. Both have handled this disgraceful affair with little credit. At last Hicks can get on with his life. Terrorist my backside.
In his OWN letters, David Hicks indicates his allegiance to the right-wing totalitarians that are the Taliban.
He writes:
“I am now very well trained for jihad in weapons some serious like anti-aircraft missiles. “
How do you think he got trained like that?
Anybody who fights for the ultra-Conservative Talibans has a case to answer. For good measure, it should be noted that the United Nations NEVER recognised them as the legitimate government of Afghanistan throughout the tortured time that they ruled there so brutally (1996-2001).
He admits to launching rockets at Indian army soldiers. I hoped his RPG missile did not kill anyone. Moreover, Hicks’ own anti-Jewish tirades have also proved that he is a bigoted redneck, whose black-heart is filled with hatred and intolerance.
And while the above proves that he is a racist terrorist, his disgusting references to females simply highlights his misogyny:
“They have to be good-looking and I prefer big tits as well”
The problem with Hicks’ fawning supporters is not just their gullability. It’s their lacking any attempt to even ask him to reject his former views. He has never apologised. Here are his letters home. Enjoy:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22957532-5001561,00.html
I agree with this but I suspect the control order was the least of Hicks problems. It is the casual connivance and silence by the former Beazley mob that bother me more, just as Beazley and co. connived over locking up innocent refugees.
Michael Atkinson and Mike Rann are two who should be more disgraced than McLelland, they treated Hicks on the same level as Bevan Spencer von Einem who is serving life for murder just to keep him from making a buck.
His whole jailing in SA needed the connivance of Rann because without any charges ever being laid in Australia, without any Australian law ever being broken, or any law anywhere for that matter, he was illegally locked down in maximum security with murderers of the worst kind.
The whole episode of Hicks and Habib is a great stain on Australia but at least Habib has not had his rights further eroded by the inept NSW government because he has been on the media, at rallies and written a book.
The notion that Hicks was ever a danger to anyone is a delusion both the ALP and the Howard mob used to incite hate and violence toward muslims in general and muslim refugees in particular and they should all be charged.
Mr Sanderson:
1. the US have funded the taliban. they regarded them as an alternative to soviet rule in afganistan.
2. If you have any evidence of Hicks’ guilt in doing ‘abominable things’ present it otherwise …..
3. I agree with Greg Barnes and I am a conservative. Please call me left wing, my family need a good laugh.
Robert McClelland has been a great disappointment as AG and while fairly vocal during the last of the Howard years he seems to have quietly slipped into the shoes of Ruddock and meekly accepted everything handed to him by ASIO & the AFP.
Anon is corect in that we know there are good and honest men and women in our security services and the AFP but whilst those at the top can pervert porcess, as in the Haneef case and with Hick’s , both services remain untrustworthy and appear to focus upon the wrong things to justify their huge budgets.
Yesterday we have had reports and allegations of a man supposedly arranging a meeting with an underaged teen yet it was in fact an AFP officer who has been conducting this charade for 3 months whilst in NSW alone there 200,000 reported cases of child abuse that go unattended because of he lack of funds and social workers to handle the problems. Is this putting our priorities in order ?
I suppose, to divert atention, we can expect a huge drug bust shortly and the usual announcement from the AFP about their extraordinary success in saving drug addicts whch seems to go unheeded in Kings Cross where illicit drugs are still openly on sale. Wake up McClelland and do the bl**dy job we elected you for.
THERE’S SO MUCH BAD IN THE BEST OF US AND SO MUCH GOOD IN THE WORST OF US, THAT IT DOESN’T BEHOOVE ANY OF US TO SIT IN JUDGEMENT ON THE REST OF US.
FOR GOD’S SAKE, DAVID HICKS HAS PAID THE PRICE, AND HOW! WE CAN ONLY GUESS AT THE EXTENT OF IT. NOW, IN THE NAME OF THAT BADGE OF HONOUR WE’RE SO PROUD OF, FAIR GO!
FOR MR. DAVID HICKS, TOO.
Yes, absolutely right, Greg and Natasha! What pervades this story is political expediency, hypocrisy with a fair amount of vindictiveness added in. When David Hicks was freed from Guantanimo Bay, after persistent public protests about hisincarceration, a Caney/Howard deal ensued, in making him an offer he could not refuse, i.e. stay in Gitmo indefinitely or plead to a minor charge. After a stage-managed release in chains, .pretty well the whole Australian political establishment and the mainstream media, indulged in a smear campaign of vilification of David Hicks as a `self-confessed terrorist`. The only ones that could hold their heads high were the Democrats, the Greens, Terry Hicks and thousands of their supporters. Now, after 12 months, the political usefulness of Hicks, Haneef, ul-Haq or Jack Thomas has come to and end and is becoming an embarrassment, so the Establishment and media quietly retreats, all the time looking for new `opportunities`.Rudd, McLelland & Co. should hang their collective heads in shame, except I doubt that they are capable of the basic human feeling, and don`t hold your breadth for an apology from the media! Apart from letting this young man `get on with his life`, the only other positive outcome is for a demonstration for the population as a whole, the sham and political stunt that this whole `war on terrorism` really is. .
It should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above that of a cat that David Hicks is just a dill who was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. A terrorist to be feared? I think not. Whereas I fully supported his claims to a fair trial on principle I think that if the military had followed a certain “take no prisoners” policy we would all have been spared a great expense.
It is weird that Hicks has been made into a poster-boy for human rights. Hicks behaved abominably and almost certainly, as far as one can tell ‘in the fog of war’, did abominable things in Bosnia and Afghanistan. All up, he has escaped fairly lightly and yet there is all this hysterical nonsense, of which much of the above is typical, that seeks to portray him as the almost totally innocent victim of evil Western governments.
It’s all so pathetic and shameful and exhibits so much of the worst side of the left.