US Officer's Claim Sparks New Call For Hicks Torture Inquiry

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and other mistakes have damaged America's reputation, and work must be done to prove the U.S. is still a force for good in the world. It seems that the case of Prisoner Abuse is still wide open...

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, February 8, 2007
By Penelope Debelle

DAVID Hicks' father, Terry, has called for an independent inquiry into claims his son was sexually tortured, after a witness report in the US described a similar assault by the US millitary at the same site in Afghanistan where Hicks was held.

The US report, released under freedom-of-information laws, was made by a senior military officer and describes an incident in February 2002 in which a prisoner was allegedly anally assaulted by military police at the US joint interrogation facility at Kandahar.

David Hicks told his family when they visited him at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 that he had been anally assaulted during interrogation by the US in Afghanistan while he was hooded and restrained.

"He said he was anally penetrated a number of times," Mr Hicks said yesterday. "They put a bag over his head, he wasn't expecting it and didn't know what it was. It was quite brutal."

Mr Hicks said his son could not see who assaulted him but could hear American voices.

"This report runs along very similar lines to what David has already told us," he said of the military officer's report. "Yet the Government has always said nothing happened to David."

Mr Hicks said his son reported the assault as part of torture allegations made to the Red Cross and the Australian consul, who referred it to the American military, but no evidence of abuse was found.

The Federal Government has said all allegations of physical abuse raised by David Hicks were dealt with, including in an investigation by the US Naval Criminal Investigation Service that found no evidence of abuse.

The sworn witness report by a US officer with "04" status, indicating the rank of major or above, said the incident it referred to happened while eight prisoners were being processed at the Kandahar site where Hicks was also processed.

The officer described seeing a military policeman preparing to undertake an anal probe of a shackled prisoner. "Without warning the (prisoner), and in a cruel way, he pushed both his fingers into the (prisoner's) anus," the officer said.

The prisoner reacted violently, screaming and falling to the ground, he said.

Terry Hicks said yesterday that the military could not investigate itself. "It's got to go to an independent investigation, not the military," he said.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said yesterday that Canberra could easily have asked that David Hicks be brought home and, given Australia's close ties with the US, there would be a high probability such a request would be acceded to.

But the Government wants the US to try Hicks because his alleged offences cannot be tried under Australian law, he said.

It has emerged that Hicks' case could face further delays because he may not be the first to be tried. The military prosecutor who last week filed charges against him, Colonel Morris Davis, said two others were also listed for charging. He rejected criticism of the charges' timing, saying notice was given to Hicks' lawyers that charges were pending before they visited Guantanamo Bay recently.

Colonel Davis said a meeting was held in his office in Washington on January 26 with Hicks' US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, and one of his Australian lawyers, Michael Griffin. He said he told them he intended to charge Hicks by the end of the next week, and Mr Griffin had asked for the charges to be timed for while they were at Guantanamo Bay.

Colonel Davis said he told him prosecutors would do their best but it would probably be the end of the week. "To allege this was a calculated act timed to aggravate (Hicks' lawyer David McLeod) and complicate the Hicks case is absurd," he said.