new york times ....
" By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: March 20, 2007
LONDON, March 19 — David Hicks, the first detainee to be formally charged under the new military tribunal rules at Guantánamo Bay, has alleged in a court document filed here that during more than five years in American custody he was beaten several times during interrogations and witnessed the abuse of other prisoners.
In an affidavit supporting his request for British citizenship, Mr. Hicks contends that before he arrived at Guantánamo, his American captors threw him and other detainees on the ground, walked on them, stripped him naked, shaved all his body hair and inserted a plastic object in his rectum.
The abuse, Mr. Hicks asserts, began during interrogations in Afghanistan, where he was captured in late 2001. It then continued while he was shuttled between American naval ships, aircraft, unknown buildings and Kandahar before he was taken to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in early 2002, according to the affidavit.
While Mr. Hicks did not claim that he was tortured at Guantánamo, he said he was given regular, mysterious injections that “would make my head feel strange.” He also said he witnessed or heard about mistreatment of others there.
A detainee with only one leg was “set upon” by a special military team and its dogs, he said. The man was dragged out of his cell, and there was blood on his face and the cell floor. “It put me in such fear that I just knew I would ‘cooperate’ in any way with the U.S.”
A spokesman for the military commission, Cmdr. J. D. Gordon, described Mr. Hicks’s allegations as “false,” and “completely lacking in merit.”
“Hicks has make a number of allegations in the past, which have proven to be unsubstantiated and completely lacking in merit,” Commander Gordon said.
For example, he said Mr. Hicks had once alleged that he was shackled to the floor for 22 hours a day, which Commander Gordon said was untrue.
Mr. Hicks is Australian, but his mother was born in Britain; he has been seeking citizenship here because he believes that the British government has done more to secure the release of its citizens in Guantánamo than Australia has.
At an American military commission hearing scheduled for March 26, Mr. Hicks will plead not guilty to a single charge of providing material support for terrorism, his military lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori, has said. The initial charges against Mr. Hicks, including attempted murder and aiding the enemy, have been dropped.
Major Mori’s aggressive defense of Mr. Hicks continues to draw fire from the chief prosecutor of the military commission, Col. Morris Davis. In an e-mail message last week to the judge who oversees the military commissions, Colonel Davis said that Major Mori appeared to have violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits an officer from using “contemptuous words” against the president, vice president, secretary of defense and other senior officials.
Colonel Davis cited numerous statements by Major Mori on his trips to Australia that he said could be considered insulting or rude. A copy of the message, from Colonel Davis to Judge Susan Crawford, was provided to The New York Times by someone who supports Major Mori.
Major Mori declined to comment on Colonel Davis’s latest criticisms. Earlier this month, after Colonel Davis first voiced disapproval of Major Mori’s conduct, Major Mori said that it might force him to withdraw from the case. Commander Gordon, the commission spokesman, declined to discuss Colonel Davis’s message, calling it “an internal staff matter.”
In Australia, Major Mori is widely credited with having changed the public attitude toward Mr. Hicks. At the time of his arrest, Mr. Hicks was often described in Australia’s tabloids as “Australia’s Taliban.” Now, across the political spectrum, there is pressure on Prime Minister John Howard to have Mr. Hicks returned to Australia soon.
Major Mori has also been praised by former detainees for his representation.
Australian intelligence officials have said that Mr. Hicks went to Afghanistan to train with Al Qaeda. For his part, Mr. Hicks said he was seized by the Northern Alliance, which was fighting with the Americans against the Taliban, and was treated well for two weeks.
“When the U.S. interrogators showed up my treatment changed,” Mr. Hicks said in the affidavit, which was filed in December but has remained largely unnoticed.
He said he was interrogated by five Americans, who were dressed in black combat gear without any insignia.
“The U.S. interrogators would question me,” he said, “and after my responses I would be slapped in the back of the head and told I was lying.”
At one point, he said, he was forced to sit on a window ledge, and outside there were six American soldiers with their weapons pointed at him, he wrote.
One interrogator, “obviously agitated, took out his pistol and aimed it at me, with his hand shaking violently with rage.” It was at this point, he said, “I realized that if I did not cooperate with U.S. interrogators, I might be shot.”
He said was taken to the amphibious assault ship Peleliu, which he knew because of announcements over the public address system. Among the detainees was John Walker Lindh, the American who later pleaded guilty to serving with the Taliban and is now serving 20 years. Commander Gordon said the military would not discuss whether Mr. Hicks was held on ships, but noted that it was a matter of public record that Mr. Lindh was held on the Peleliu.
On board, Mr. Hicks said he could hear other detainees “screaming in pain” when being interrogated.
He said he was later transferred to the amphibious assault ship Bataan, where he said conditions became “drastically” worse. He was fed only a handful of rice or fruit three times a day, the affidavit asserts, and on several occasions, he and other detainees, blindfolded, hooded and handcuffed, were thrown onto helicopters and taken to hangar-like buildings in an unknown location.
They were forced to kneel for 10 hours, during which time “I was hit in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle several times (hard enough to knock me over), slapped in the back of the head, kicked, stepped on, and spat on,” he said. “I could hear the groans and cries of other detainees.”
He was flown back to the ship, and a few days later back to a hangar.
A week or so later, he was flown to Kandahar, where he and other detainees “were forced to lie face down in the mud while solders walked across our backs.”
He was stripped, his body hair shaved and a piece of “white plastic was forcibly inserted in my rectum for no apparent purpose,” he wrote. Soldiers made crude comments about the insertion, he said.
Commander Gordon said he had no knowledge of such treatment. Some former detainees have made similar accusations, including Mamdouh Habib, an Australian who was picked up in Pakistan, turned over to the United States and delivered to Egypt, where he says he was badly tortured.
At Guantánamo, Mr. Hicks said he was also shown a picture of Mr. Habib. “In the photo, Habib’s face was black and blue,” Mr. Hicks wrote. “I first thought it was a photo of a corpse,” he said, adding that an interrogator told him that if he did not cooperate he would be sent to Egypt “to suffer the same fate.”
“This regular brutality left me in a heightened state of fear and anxiety about my own safety,” Mr. Hicks wrote in the affidavit.
After Mr. Hicks was formally charged earlier this month, Australian officials said publicly that they hoped a plea bargain allowing Mr. Hicks to come home could be negotiated. Two American officials close to the case said they expected that the deal would be for Mr. Hicks to plead guilty to the one charge, in exchange for the five years he has already been held."