David Hicks pleads guilty from Gitmo -- sort of [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 7:02 AM on March 29, 2007.

In this clip from Democracy Now! Amy Goodman speaks at length with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights about the state of Guantanamo, the guilty plea from Australian David Hicks and the president's repeated runaround of Supreme Court decisions.

Most of Gitmo's 300+ prisoners have been held for years without access to a lawyer or the right to face the accusations.

According to Democracy Now, David Hicks was initially charged with "conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to engage in acts of terrorism, attempted murder and aiding the enemy but only ended up charging him with a single crime -- providing material support for terrorism."

It's a long clip but it's one of the greatest ongoing travesties of justice under the Bush administration orchestrated by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales....

A snippet:

Ratner: You have a man there for five years and the first thing that’s said after he takes this guilty plea is that he's going to be able to serve his sentence in Australia. So you have to say to yourself, how do you get out of Guantanamo? You get out either becuase your country fights hard to get you out, which in this case Australia did not put up a very big battle to get David Hicks out....

...So Hicks is sitting there saying, well how do I get back? I mean that’s my imagination, I’m imagining that’s what the lawyers have essentially said. This is a way -- this sentence will be served in Australia is what it appears, and therefore he will get back to Australia. Otherwise he's sitting there, conceivable could get a long sentence, whatever he gets and have to serve it in Guantanamo. So this is a way back to Australia and it’s a way out of Guantanamo which as far as I can see right now, most people still don't have.

Tagged as: guantanamo bay, enemy combatants, constitutional issues

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.