Tuesday, March 27, 2007
HOLDOUT FOLDS
The SMH’s David Marr last year:
Hicks’s condition appears to be deteriorating. He won’t speak to Australian consular officials who come to check on him. This year he refused to take his father’s Christmas telephone call. He seems still to be talking to his lawyers. A guilty plea would offer the Howard Government a neat exit from this mess in time for the elections. So far, Hicks is holding out.
Not any more he ain’t. Maybe Howard bribed him with a pie or something, since Dave seems to have put on some weight during his time in One Ton or More Bay … despite his lawyers’ repeated claims:
According to his American military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, David Hicks is depressed and losing weight.
Natasha Stott Despoja repeated Mori’s line in Parliament, although it now appears an unnamed consular official may have been more accurate:
The Minister for Foreign Affairs has said that an Australian consular official has recently visited David Hicks and said that he is fit and well, although he has complained about a persistent back problem. I am afraid that this is at odds with evidence from Major Michael Mori, who, as we know, is David’s US military attorney. He says that David is suffering from poor health, depression and weight loss.
Hicks’ Australian lawyer Stephen Kenny also told of a shrinking Dave:
He said Hicks had lost weight, was not eating well and was depressed.
That was in 2003. Terry Hicks met his son in Gitmo the following year, and found him not to be as usually described:
He said his son was finding it hard to cope with his detention, although he had “gained a bit of weight”.
Denied the gift of a skeletal Hicks, the Age laments that their not-so-little-buddy is all heavy and puffy. Add another word: guilty.
UPDATE. Another of Dave’s lawyers, in January:
David McLeod says Mr Hicks was chained to the floor of his interview room and has not seen sunlight for months … “His visage was an extremely sorrowful one,” he said. “His eyes are sunken and his cheeks are sallow. He looks like an old man."
That was before Dave’s miracle cure:
Hicks’s lawyers had described him as having dark, sunken eyes, but he did not appear like that today.
Rather than being pale from long stints locked inside the maximum security prison, Hicks’s skin looked as tanned as that of his American military lawyer Major Michael Mori, sitting beside him in court …
Prison food had added about 10kg to Hicks’s small, 167cm-tall frame.