Major Michael Dante Mori is the defense counsel for David Hicks, that poor, poor Adelaide boy stuck in 'Gitmo'. This is from an interview on Andrew Denton's 'Enough Rope'.
ANDREW DENTON: But you really hadn't had a lot of experience in international law at that time, had you.And I'm inclined to agree. Then, moving along, there was this bit which really kicked me off the chair.
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: No, no, and, again, stepping into it, I thought I was I going to be involved in court martials, I have plenty of criminal experience dealing with court martials, and that's the laws we would be using. Unfortunately, what I found out that we were in something totally different, something completely made up and resurrected from 1942.
ANDREW DENTON: Which is Military Commissions?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Military Commissions.
ANDREW DENTON: Did you know anything about those?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Nothing, nothing. I had no specialised training in the law of war, I had no specialised training in international law, and so once I get there I realised I really wasn't trained to be involved in this process.
ANDREW DENTON: The Military Commissions in 1942 you're referring to were set up in response to Germans who'd come to America to commit acts of sabotage and needed to be tried.
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes.
ANDREW DENTON: And they were set up specifically for those. The Military Commission process you've been through here with David Hicks, you've since come to describe them as: "Show trials set up for political purposes, not legal ends." What's brought you to that conclusion?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: What you found out was, the people that created the system are the same people that were responsible for fighting the war in Afghanistan, setting up and choosing Guantanamo as the detention centre, approving interrogation techniques and being in charge of the interrogations that were going. So what you was a system of, sort of like, the investigators and the gaolers also being in charge of the supposed trial system. There was no independent check and balance on it. Unfortunately they needed to set up a system that would justify what they had already done.
ANDREW DENTON: What is the key difference between a Military Commission and a court martial, the system you were expecting?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: I think it's the independence, the independence of a judge, a judiciary that is in control. Once someone is charged, the independent judge takes control, and that goes from both the trial level and through the appeal process. In the Commission system, it was set up - they created this person, sort of an appointing authority, and I think in Australia maybe more like a DPP. Yet that individual - if I made a motion to dismiss a charge, it would go not to the presiding officers who were on it, but it would have to go to the appointing authority. So it would be like letting the DPP rule on defence motions here in Australia, and that's not a fair system that anyone can support.
ANDREW DENTON: What are the charges actually laid against David Hicks?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Right now he's not charged at all. Obviously the system was thrown out.
ANDREW DENTON: Sure.
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: The charges that they'd come up with before was a charge of conspiracy and attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent, that they made up, and aiding the enemy.
ANDREW DENTON: "An unprivileged belligerent"? Meaning what?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: I don't know what they mean. They made it up.
ANDREW DENTON: So you're his defence counsel...
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes.
ANDREW DENTON: ...And you can't even define what the term 'unprivileged belligerent' means. How do you defend that?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Well, their view was, everybody on the Taliban side. Anybody on the Taliban side was a war criminal because they resisted the invasion of their country. I didn't quite understand that. Then it was, as you heard the administration, their position was, "Well they didn't wear proper uniforms." So I started thinking about that. I said, "What about the Northern Alliance? What about the CIA they were fighting in Afghanistan? They weren't wearing proper uniforms." So it really can't be a crime and it's not a crime, but they had to try to fabricate something.
ANDREW DENTON: You mentioned the US Supreme Court. A little over a month ago they ruled that the Military Commissions were in violation of US military codes, and also some of the Geneva Convention. Does this bring David Hicks closer to what you would consider a fair trial?The bit in bold, I thought was an interesting point. The logical point is, those guys in Yasukuni Shrine that everybody is fussing about... maybe they didn't get a fair trial either?
MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: No, not until we see what the system - there is two issues involved. Obviously, one, by ruling the Commission system was illegal, it raises the issue of has a war crime been committed against David Hicks by him being tried in a system that did not provide a fair trial. The US prosecuted many Japanese for that and it would be a violation Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. What is the Australian Government going to do about that? Because right now he's been a victim of a war crime far greater than he's ever done to anybody else.
In which case, what's the point of trying to build on a false justice like that anyway? Major Michael Mori is saying something that probably needed to be said, but who took notice? You sort of wonder.
Anyway, if you have time, do read through the interview.
No comments:
Post a Comment