Australian former Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks yesterday said he was a “political scapegoat” and insisted his training in Pakistan and Afghanistan was “very far removed from acts of terrorism.”
In a rare interview, his first public comment since the release of his controversial memoir Guantanamo: My Journey, Hicks hit back at criticism that he deliberately glossed over the events that saw him detained in Cuba.
He also denied that his account deliberately played down the training he received and the extent of his involvement with al-Qaeda, saying the politics of the time had overshadowed real events.
“I was used as a political scapegoat,” Hicks told the Sun-Herald newspaper.
“If I had been treated according to the law no one would ever have heard my name,” he said.
Now in his mid-30s and living in Sydney, Hicks spent five and a half years in the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay before being convicted by a military commission of providing material support for terrorism.
He said that if he had “actually injured someone, attempted to or even trained to,” he would have been tried in a regular court and made an example of, something which he said “never happened.”
Hicks returned to Australia in April 2007 and spent nine months in prison completing the commission’s sentence before being freed, on condition that he report to police and give no interviews for a year.
Captured in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001 and once dubbed the “Aussie Taliban,” Hicks said he attended “mainstream” military training there and only learned that there were secret al-Qaeda camps once he was in Guantanamo.
“How would a white boy, new to Islam, not understanding local customs or languages, largely uneducated in the ways of the world, get access to such supposedly secret camps planning acts of terror?” Hicks said.
The former farmhand also defended the lack of detail in his book about the training he received in Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying he had edited it out fearing the events were dull.
“I couldn’t imagine the public wanting to wade through pages of anecdotes such as how I learnt to smear mud on my face and camouflage a uniform, or basic map-reading and using compasses,” Hicks said.
“These were situations very far removed from acts of terrorism such as bomb-making, hijacking or targeting civilians.”
Hicks described his decision to convert to Islam in 1999 as an “impulsive,” one born of a desire for “somewhere to belong and to be with people who shared my interest in world affairs” rather than for spiritual reasons.
Hicks is fiercely private and said his years of isolation and brutality left him fearful of human contact.
“Lights, cameras and being the focus of an interview is reminiscent of a Guantanamo interrogation,” he said.
“This is why I chose to write a book.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese