a roll of the dice

The South Australian Government has gone ahead with legislation to ban David Hicks from selling his story.  He’s still allowed to tell his story, but he’s not allowed to sell it.  Lucky him.  Presumably he’ll be able to find a job with no problems - after all, he was never convicted of anything by a court, so most employers will no doubt be happy to overlook the constant references to him being a “confessed” terrorism supporter.  Either that or he can live off the interest which accrued in his long term savings account for the five odd years he spent shackled to the floor in a cell in Cuba.

The reasoning behind this political posturing is (as usual when it comes to terrorism) dubious.  Hicks was detained by an foreign, non-judicial tribunal of doubtful legality and held (and tortured) without charge for five years.  At the end of that he was offered a politically motivated deal whereby he pleaded guilty and avoided a show trial at which he might have received life in prison.  Now, on the basis of that plea, he is treated as a convicted terrorist by elements of Australia’s political and media organisations.

Here in the free world we have strong laws to protect criminal suspects from confessions which are obtained by ‘verballing‘ that is, off-the-record threats, intimidation or physical violence being used by the police to elicit incriminating statements from a suspect.  How can someone who has been through what Hicks has been through possibly be exempt from the same principle?