-dictive: Ruddock determined Hicks won't profit.
Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he will amend the law retrospectively if it turns out a loophole will allow Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks to profit from telling his story.
A book about Hicks's experiences, written by journalist Leigh Sales, is due to be published tomorrow by Melbourne University Press.
The Dean of Law at the University of Sydney, Ron McCallum, and Melbourne Civil Liberties lawyer Robert Richter, QC, believe the Federal Government might not be able to stop Hicks from keeping the profits from any book he writes about his involvement with the Taliban in Afghanistan and his detention by the United States at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Mr. Ruddock assiduously avoided offering an Australian citizen who had been swept up in an Afghan dragnet any of the usual support that Australians are entitled to abroad. Unlike the UK, which refused to allow its people to be tried by the Kangaroo (now THERE'S irony) court at Gitmo, Ruddock carefully looked away from the ethics, legality and methods.
Then, to rub salt into the judicial wound, he accepted that Mr Hicks could be convicted on a charge that did not exist at the time it was supposedly "committed", in the presence of an organisation that was not declared to be terrorist until 6 weeks or so after Hicks was arrested.
Now it appears that the minister has become addicted to the joys of retrospective legislation to rob David Hicks of any compensation that his sad adventure might produce. Philly boy, you are stacking up some nasty karmic chits that you will need to redeem. And it looks like there IS some karma coming round.
More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.
[...] Other prisoner advocates said the Bush administration has made its task more difficult by exaggerating the threat posed by most Guantanamo inmates -- officials repeatedly called them "the worst of the worst" -- and refusing to acknowledge mistaken detentions.
Foreign governments have also questioned why U.S. officials should expect other countries to pitch in, given that Washington won't offer asylum to detainees either.
Road warning for those who drive looking in the rear view mirror, "Sharp left Turn Ahead". Hope its not as vindictive as the right.
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