01/11/2006
By Peter Veness
AUSTRALIAN terror suspect David Hicks was depressed and disorientated after being in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay for seven months with the lights on constantly, his lawyer said today. US military lawyer Major Michael Mori said today that Hicks had been confined to one concrete room for about 22 hours of every day for the last seven months. Maj Mori is in Australia to seek a meeting with Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and for a cross-party briefing of federal MPs. "Since March of this year, he was placed in solitary confinement, in a cement room with a steel door where he spends 22 and a half to 23 hours a day," Major Mori said. He suggested Hicks had been subject to sleep deprivation, an action defined as coercion rather than torture by Mr Ruddock. "The lights are on 24 hours a day. That affects, obviously, his sleep and his sense of time. "There was no valid reason given why he was placed in solitary." Asked if Hicks was close to breaking, Maj Mori said he hoped the former Adelaide man was not. "We're doing everything we can. We try to get down there as quickly as possible and try to get books through for him, but it does take some time." But the reality was that Hicks was in a terrible mental state. "I went down and spent my birthday with him at the beginning of October," Maj Mori said. "He's not doing well. You can see the effects. "I see the changes in him, a sense of depression (and) I think that's what they're probably shooting for: they want to break him, they don't want him to resist." Maj Mori said a possible explanation for the solitary confinement could be that Hicks had complained. "The day before he was put in solitary, he met with Australian consular (officials) and complained, things that were happening to him and also what he had seen. The next day, he was put in solitary confinement." Hicks now refusing to meet consular officials. "They (guards at Guantanamo Bay) have trained him that if he doesn't talk, if he doesn't complain then he doesn't get punished." Hicks, 31, has been detained by the US since his capture among Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001. He pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, aiding the enemy and conspiracy, and was to appear before a US military commission. But following a US Supreme Court ruling in June, declaring illegal the military tribunals set up to try Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay inmates, those charges were dropped. US President George W. Bush has since signed controversial new legislation into law allowing revamped military commissions to proceed. It is expected the US will move to charge Hicks with similar offences and Maj Mori has previously indicated his client will again plead not guilty. SOURCE: The Australian |
