but I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers

Two people are detained in a war zone. Both are alleged by the military force which detains them to have been somewhere they shouldn’t have. Both are held captive, without proper charges or any prospect of genuine legal process. Both confess, seemingly under duress and in possible fear for their own safety, to the ‘charges’ that are levelled against them.

On the one hand, we have David Hicks, who was captured by allied forces. The Australian (and most of the rest of the media in this country) describes him as:

confessed terrorist supporter David Hicks

On the other hand, we have any of the group of British military personnel recently taken hostage by Iran. The Australian describes the statement of the navy personnel in question as follows:

Iran airs new British ‘confession’

Note the judicious use of quotes to convey unequivocally how inherently dubious and unreliable the statement is. In the relevant article, the captured Britons are not referred to as ‘confessed’ anythings – they are hostages, at the mercy of an opaque and arbitrary regime.

This kind of distinction is one thing in the media, where actual proof of the basis for statements is rarely required before a slant can be put on the reporting. And of course, in all likelihood Mr Hicks was out there helping fundamentalists fight US forces, and the British sailors were (possibly) on patrol in Iraqi waters, not Iranian. But when we have a statement from one of the sailors as follows:

Even through our wrongdoing they have still treated us well and humanely, which I am and always will be eternally grateful for.

or

Unfortunately during the course of our mission we entered into Iranian waters.

how are we to differentiate it from the uncorroborated statements coming from our own prisoners at Guantanamo bay?

And this is the whole problem: when we remove proper legal processes and instead rely on a coerced, non-judicial “confession” from a man we have been torturing for five years, we have no rational basis for arguing that his statements are any more believable or reliable than those of some (no-doubt terrified) British sailors being held by Iran. We cannot point to testable evidence, proper process, neutral decision makers or the fact that the accused was not placed under any duress. In other words, we have ceded the moral, legal and rational high ground, and it will already take a hell of a lot of work to get it back.