PUT away your "Free David Hicks!" signs. Scrape the "Bring David Hicks home" stickers off your cars. As the man himself now admits, he did indeed help al-Qaida. To be specific, he did aid the terrorist group, which has so far killed more than 100 of your fellow Australians, directly or through proxies in Bali, and murdered thousands more civilians besides. And that's worth at least the five years in jail he's already served, wouldn't you think? Plus a few more. But when did Hicks's deluded fans show any serious concern for what Hicks did, or prepared himself to do? Even now hear them claim that his confession in a plea bargain with US military prosecutors this week was meaningless -- something simply beaten out of him.
- From the International Commission of Jurists' Glenn McGowan: "Who amongst us would not consider, in his shoes, pleading guilty just to escape a hellhole?"
- From Liberty Victoria's Brian Walters: "After five years in shocking conditions . . . any ray of light showing a way out would be taken, and it has been."
- From The Age: "Desperation drives the deal."
- And from Greens leader Bob Brown: "His guilty plea is simply a plea for release for exit from the inhumane Guantanamo Bay gulag."
But, yes, Guantanamo Bay is not nice. It is not a hotel, you see, but a prison to hold and question men suspected of working for the world's most lethal terrorists. And it's also true Hicks pleaded guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence -- as criminals often do here. But it doesn't follow that his plea is thus worthless.
First, the military commission trying him cannot accept it unless it is convinced it was made voluntarily. More importantly, Hicks would have pleaded guilty only if he thought the case against him was strong. And when you consider even the evidence already public you will see he did no more than admit to the blindingly obvious.
Here's what is not disputed by anyone. In 1999, Hicks joined Albania's Kosovo Liberation Army. He then converted to Islam and trained for two months in Pakistan with Lashkar-e-Toiba, an Islamist group known for terrorism. In a letter to his family in August 2000, he boasted he'd served in Kashmir, where Pakistani soldiers confront Indian troops, and "got to fire hundreds of bullets." In January 2001, he went to Afghanistan to join al-Qaida, which had already bombed US embassies and publicly demanded "all Muslims able to do so to kill Americans -- whether civilian or military".
He was to stay and train with al-Qaida for months more than any other Westerner, and told his family he'd become a "practical soldier", preparing for martyrdom. He hoped to ensure "Western-Jewish domination is finished, so we live under Muslim rule again".
This forced his father to at one stage admit: "He's a terrorist in our eyes and he's fighting against his own."
How committed was he? On September 11, 2001, Hicks was staying with a friend in Pakistan, and saw the al-Qaida attacks on television. The very next day he was back in Afghanistan, with his al-Qaida unit. Hicks says he returned just to get his clothes and leave. But in the two months before his capture, he'd served as an airport guard in Kandahar and gone, armed, to the front at Konduz to fight coalition soldiers there. Our own soldiers were then in the field.
Hicks denies he shot anyone. But did he support al-Qaida? Yes, he says. And yes, says the evidence.
Free David Hicks, you say? Free yourself, rather, of this mad need to free our foes.