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Letters To Hicks Censored, Lawyer Says

By Richard Baker
The Age
October 12, 2006

LETTERS sent by Australians to GuantanamoBay detainee David Hicks are censored, with United States authorities removing words of encouragement, his American military lawyer claims.

Major Michael Mori said supportive messages from Australians to Hicks, who has been held by the US since 2001 after being captured in Afghanistan, had been removed from letters before they were given to him.

In one letter sent by an Australian earlier this year, references to the call by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for Guantanamo Bay to be shut down were removed before Hicks was able to read it.

"The words 'Archbishop of Canterbury' and 'wanting Guantanamo to be closed' were taken out," Major Mori said. "I've no idea why this is happening. It fits the pattern of wanting to instil a sense of hopelessness in someone."

He said that many of the letters sent to Hicks were withheld for months at Guantanamo before being passed to Hicks, 31. "Last month David was just getting some letters that were dated from March, April and June," Major Mori said.

Delaying the processing of detainees' mail is one of the allegations made in a US marine's affidavit that was released this week.

The unnamed marine said that as well as being told by guards of random beatings of detainees and removal of their privileges for no reason, a petty officer who worked in the mailroom said letters to inmates could be withheld for up to six months at a clerk's discretion.

Hicks is awaiting new charges against him. Previous terror charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, were ruled invalid after the US Supreme Court decided that the military commissions set up to try detainees were illegal.

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