torture tale sidesteps hicks gag

Torture tale sidesteps Hicks gag
April 07, 2007 02:00am


Hicks torture details in UK citizenship application
Claims involve beating, torture and sexual abuse
Shown photos of beaten, bruised Mamdouh Habib

IT was in the chaotic weeks after September 11, 2001, that the bearded foreigner known as the "Australian Taliban" was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.

David Hicks, known at the time as Mohammed Dawood, was held by the Taliban's feared enemies for two weeks.

He was neither interrogated nor physically restrained nor abused, to his surprise, given the Northern Alliance's reputation for extreme cruelty and even killing of prisoners.

Then he was handed over to the Americans.

"When the US interrogators showed up, my treatment changed," Hicks later recounted.

"My hands were restrained behind my back and I was forced to kneel during interrogations. US personnel would force me into painful physical positions.

"The US interrogators would question me and after my responses I would be slapped in the back of the head and told I was lying."

In one session, Hicks says he was made to sit on a window ledge from where he could see six US soldiers outside with guns trained on him.

In another, he says his interrogator pointed a pistol at him, his hands shaking violently with rage.

"I became aware that physical assaults during interrogations were accepted by US personnel, and I knew that if I did not co-operate with US interrogators, physical force would be used upon me."

Hicks's graphic account of his treatment by the Americans, contained in a sworn statement to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in Britain to support his bid for British citizenship, is at odds with the assertions in his Guantanamo Bay plea agreement that he was not mistreated by the US.

It also explains why the US has banned him from talking to the media for a year.

Hicks's story, detailed in the affidavit obtained by The Weekend Australian, is not one the US Government is keen to have retold.

Two weeks after his capture, according to Hicks's statement, he was blindfolded, hooded and handcuffed and driven to an airport by the Americans.

There, he says, "someone kicked my feet out from under me and I fell on my face on the tarmac. Then someone grabbed the back of my head and pushed it into the floor".

He says he was picked up and thrown into a helicopter, still handcuffed, and secured to the floor with straps around his wrists.

Hicks was flown to the American navy ship, USS Peleliu, where he was held for several weeks with other prisoners, including the American John Walker Lindh.

Detainees 'screaming in pain'

Hicks says he heard detainees screaming in pain and saw them emerge from interrogations with clear marks from beatings.

Next, he was transferred to an unknown location and held in a hangar where, he says, for about 10 hours he was forced to kneel on the floor.

"US personnel verbally harassed and physically assaulted me and other detainees. I was hit in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle several times, hard enough to knock me over, slapped in the back of the head, kicked, stepped on and spat on.

"I could hear the groans and cries of the other detainees."

From there, Hicks was flown back to Afghanistan.

"When the plane arrived in Kandahar, detainees were made to lie face down in the mud while soldiers walked across our backs," he says.

"We were roped together biceps to biceps. I was taken from the group and led to a shed and stripped naked. In the shed, pictures were taken of me naked.

"My head, armpits and crotch were shaved and I was covered with a liquid by use of a sponge. I was photographed naked and a white piece of plastic was forcibly inserted in my rectum.

"Some of the staff joked about this procedure. The US personnel made remarks such as 'extra-ribbed for your pleasure' (like a condom) as the item was stuck in my rectum."

Hicks was bundled into another plane, handcuffed and strapped to his seat, wearing goggles, earmuffs and face mask, for the flight to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On arrival at Camp X-Ray, Hicks and his fellow prisoners were placed in a row of cages.

Each had two buckets, one to drink from, the other to use as a toilet.

No one was allowed to talk.

He says only two positions were permitted; they could lie on their backs staring at the roof, or sit on the floor facing ahead. Looking in any other direction or talking to other inmates allegedly prompted a beating.

The 'IRF-ing' process

In Camp X-Ray, Hicks witnessed the process known as "IRF-ing".

The camp's Initial Reaction Force consisted of half a dozen soldiers in body armour, helmets and shin guards, carrying shields and accompanied by dogs to help them subdue detainees.

Hicks describes how the IRF team went to work on a one-legged inmate, who was allegedly dragged from his cell afterwards with his face bloodied and with blood on the concrete floor.

He also alleges an assault on a Saudi prisoner named Jumma, who was punished for arguing with a guard. Hicks said Jumma was ordered to lie on his stomach in his cell.

The guard allegedly jumped and landed on his knees on the detainee's back, then grabbed his head and slammed it face-down into the concrete 10 to 20 times, before repeatedly punching his face.

By the end of it, Hicks says, "Jumma was unconscious and not moving. He was picked up and carried unconscious from the cell and placed in the hospital where he remained for two weeks. Jumma had a broken wrist and broken ribs from the beating."

The crucial question of whether the alleged treatment of Hicks and his fellow prisoners was illegal has been the subject of years of legal argument in the US courts.

The Geneva Conventions state that "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever".

But early on in the war on terror, the US decided that Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners were not entitled to the Geneva protections. The legality of this position is still being fought out in the courts.

In 2005, the US Congress passed an amendment to a defence appropriations bill, banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of anyone in American custody.

Under the law as it currently stands, the treatment described by Hicks would clearly be illegal today - if it was meted out to a US citizen.

Another vexed issue that's yet to be finally decided is whether foreigners in US custody in Cuba are entitled to any rights under the US justice system.

Further, the law banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be retrospectively enforced because the US constitution prohibits retrospective laws, again insofar as they apply to its own citizens and on its own soil.

The ban on retrospectivity has been deemed not to apply to enemy combatants such as Hicks, who was charged and pleaded guilty under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

In short, the question of what constituted "illegal treatment" at Guantanamo Bay is far from resolved.

Thought Habib 'was a corpse'

Hicks claims he was terrified by the alleged violence of US personnel, and by the ever-present threat of worse to come.

During one interrogation, he said he was shown a photo of another Australian, Mamdouh Habib, who was being detained in Egypt.

"Habib's face was bruised black and blue. At first I thought it was a photo of a corpse. The interrogator told me if I didn't co-operate, I would be sent to Egypt to suffer the same fate," he says.

Detainees lived in a state of constant fear and anxiety, according to Hicks, heightened by being woken every hour during the night and obliged to show the guards their identification wristband and toothbrush.

This was apparently part of the policy of sleep deprivation that has been well documented in Guantanamo Bay, along with other techniques described by Hicks.

In Hicks's case, these techniques had the desired effect - softening him up for interrogation.

"It was clear to me from all that I was experiencing and witnessing that the key to my physical safety was interacting with my interrogators ... They had also become the only people who I thought would be able to get me released from Guantanamo.

"I felt that I had to ensure that whatever I did pleased the interrogators."

Sally Neighbour is a senior reporter with The Australian and Four Corners, and is the author of In the Shadow of Swords: On the Trail of Terrorism from Afghanistan to Australia.