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Last updated on July 24th, 2017 at 08:21 am
Melbourne Age political editor Michelle Grattan on the upcoming trial of poor little David Hicks:
All the Howard Government currently cares about is that it happens quickly. It is not interested in the fairness debate, saying it won some changes earlier and now it’s satisfied with the process. Contrast the flurry of Government activity in the Schapelle Corby affair – her case (admittedly much less serious) resonates electorally but Hicks’ doesn’t.
Corby’s case is much less serious? Interesting.
The attitude to Hicks is just the extreme end of the Government’s more general rough justice approach to human rights. It’s of a piece with treatment of immigration detainees and its dismissal of criticisms over the years by United Nations bodies.
That’s how evil we are down here in apocalyptic Bushworld—we dismiss UN criticism. Ted Lapkin offers a more evolved view:
David Hicks has sown the jihadist wind, and he will now reap the whirlwind before a US military commission. Hicks aspired to be a professional Islamist holy warrior. In letters to his family, the former Aussie jackaroo boasted of fighting with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the al-Qaeda-affiliated organisation that has conducted a bloody terrorist campaign against India. And he wound up in Guantanamo after being captured as a rank-and-file Taliban fighter during combat operations in an active theatre of war.
