Guantanamo: Hicks' torture uncivilised

Hicks' torture uncivilised - Brown

The torture of Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks, as outlined in The Monthly magazine cover article by US academic Alfred W McCoy, is frightening and horrifying, Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"The only thing that may be more frightening than the gross mental torture of Hicks and other Guantanamo inmates is the Australian government's complicity," Senator Brown said.

"Guantanamo Bay is a mental torture hellhole. Here a Christian government is going to great lengths to torture inmates with both sensory deprivation, as well as light, temperature and sound manipulation."

"Yet, Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, who echoes Prime
Minister's own lack of feeling and Christianity on this issue, dismisses the breaches of humanity and international and domestic law, by saying 'It's not a conventional war in which others are observing the Geneva conventions.'"

Senator Brown, who challenged President Bush on Guantanamo Bay in the
Australian Parliament in October 2003, said the Greens will continue to campaign for Hicks to be brought back to Australia.

Senator Brown was refused permission to visit Hicks in Guantanamo Bay, though a number of US Senators have been granted that permission.

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