The release of Mamdouh Habib does not absolve the Government from explaining its citizens' long detention.The citizens of Australia and other democracies enjoy the liberty they do because of the inherited wisdom of centuries that the rule of law must govern the relationship between the state and individual. Citizenship is supposed to carry with it several inviolable rights that protect the individual against excesses by a powerful state. Australians Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks are two such individuals who since late 2001 have been denied these rights with the disgraceful acquiescence of their Government. The announcement late on Tuesday that Mr Habib is to be released from US military detention after more than three years, without facing any charges, shows how arbitrary this exercise of state power has been.
In the name of a war that is meant to be a fight for freedom, the detainees have been subject to egregious violations of legal principles, some of which date back to the Magna Carta, the great charter of English liberty. The US and Australian governments have colluded to deny the detainees' rights to habeas corpus, trampled over the presumption of innocence without laying charges against them, denied them the prospect of a fair trial and failed to ensure their protection from ill-treatment and torture, which they allegedly suffered - and we know detainees in Iraq were tortured. (Even if some detainees were indeed the "worst of the worst", it was essential that any evidence obtained could be used in court to secure a conviction.) Only last June did the US Supreme Court reassert the principle that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay could not be put beyond the reach of any law. Whether the US had the legal authority to detain them has still not been determined.
The Government has accepted almost everything done to and said about its citizens on the Bush Administration's say-so. On Tuesday Attorney-General Philip Ruddock continued to publicly insinuate guilt. "Mr Habib remains of interest in a security context because of his former associations and activities," he said. Mr Habib is being repatriated at Australia's request. The Age believes such a request, applying to both Australians, should have been made long ago when other nations insisted that their citizens be charged in reasonable time or released. As justification for accepting Mr Habib's long detention, Mr Ruddock said: "The United States considers Mr Habib to be an enemy combatant who has been detained in accordance with the laws of war."
Although Mr Habib had been designated to go before a military commission in July, Mr Ruddock said it did not follow that Hicks, whose trial is set down for March, would be released. "No, the charges have been brought against Hicks and one assumes that (US authorities) have satisfied themselves of the nature of the evidence against him." This does not mean the evidence has been satisfactorily tested. As independent observers at last year's preliminary proceedings of the commission concluded, a fair trial remains "virtually impossible" because of the lack of usual rules of evidence, impartial qualified judges and rights of appeal. The laws to which Mr Ruddock refers are little more than laws the US made up as it went along, taking the Australian Government with it. The due process that characterises all reasonable conceptions of law has been notably absent.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Editorial/Australia-must-close-this-dark-legal-chapter/2005/01/12/1105423554286.html
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