Gitmo Detainee Remains In Limbo

This story was written by CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn

In the past five years, more than 750 men, ranging in age from 10 to 80, have been rounded up in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo, where critics say, they have endured mistreatment tantamount to torture — isolation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hooding, stripping, no Korans or any reading materials — and denied legal rights normally afforded terrorism suspects. Dozens of detainees went on hunger strikes. Three committed suicide.

FBI agents detailed to Guantanamo witnessed some mistreatment, as described in more than 200 pages of documents obtained last week by the ACLU in a Freedom of Information Act request. Detainees underwent interrogations in rooms either very cold or very hot and were observed in dark rooms with exposure to extremely loud rock music and strobe lights.

"I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor; with no chair, food, or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours, or more," wrote one agent in a 2004 report.

One detainee was seen almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of his own pulled out hair next to him, another with a full beard had his head covered in duct tape, according to the documents.

Hicks claims he was beaten before, during and after his interrogations, and that he was drugged and deprived of sleep. His open-ended captivity is an ongoing cause for public protest in Australia, where rallies press the government to demand his return. Prime Minister John Howard says he discussed the case again with President Bush yesterday.

"Our position on David Hicks is we want him tried as soon as possible," Howard told reporters in Sydney. "We are unhappy that that he's been held so long without trial."

After 30 months in Guantanamo, Hicks became one of only 10 detainees the U.S. military has actually brought charges against — accusing him of conspiracy, attempted murder, aiding the enemy for allegedly training with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and taking up arms with al Qaeda and the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The charges allege he guarded Taliban tanks at the Kandahar Airport and engaged in combat, along with American John Walker Lindh, near Konduz.

"Their case is weak," says U.S. Marine Major Michael Mori, appointed to defend Hicks in 2003. "There's no valid law of war violation that can be charged against David."

Hicks pleaded not guilty at a military commission hearing in 2004, but the process went on hold after the Supreme Court deemed the procedures unconstitutional. The Pentagon is due to submit new rules to Congress next week and hopes to resume the tribunals later this year. The government says Hicks will be one of the first detainees charged again and put on trial.

"After five years of litigation, no detainee has had a hearing in court. After five years, the government continues to argue the detainees have no rights," says attorney Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, who represents a number of detainees.

Hicks became the first prisoner represented when the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights took up his cause in 2002, challenging his detention in U.S courts, a right the Supreme Court ultimately upheld.

"Guantanamo is to me what the Japanese concentration camps were during the Second World War," says CCR President Michael Ratner.

In Cuba, about 80 protesters demonstrated outside a gate leading to the naval base today.

"The idea that you can indefinitely detain people, give them no access to their families or initially lawyers, never charge them and torture them in an offshore penal colony, should be absolute anathema to any civilized country in the world," Ratner says.

The Bush administration repeatedly described the Guantanamo detainees as the "worst of the worst," but some available evidence suggests otherwise. Only 8 percent were ever classified as al Qaeda fighters, and less than 25 percent were deemed to have any intelligence value, according to Pentagon documents studied by Seton Hall Law School. The studies led by Mark and Joshua Denbeuax found the military rated detainees properly held "enemy combatants" in almost every case, but that was without ever calling any witnesses — and 89 percent of the time, without producing any evidence.

Only 5 percent of Guantanamo detainees were even captured by American forces in Afghanistan, the Seton Hall team found. Northern Alliance fighters claim to have picked up Hicks. Most Guantanamo detainees were turned over by Afghanis or Pakistanis for cash rewards.

Here's what one of the colorful leaflets urging their help said: "Dear countrymen: The al Qaeda terrorists are our enemy. They are the enemy of your independence and freedom. Come on. Let us find their most secret hiding places. Search them out and inform the intelligence service of the province and get the big prize."

A laborer and one-time rodeo competitor from Adelaide, Australia, Hicks lived in Japan and worked on horse farms before traveling in 1999 to Albania to fight with the Kosovo Liberation Army against the Serbs — the same side of the Balkan war the U.S. had intervened on. Standing just 5-feet, 2 inches tall, Hicks was rejected from the Australian Army because he never finished high school. He converted to Islam, but no longer practices the religion.

"He had experience in Kosovo; he had experience in Kashmir; he's been to a number of combat and terrorism training courses put on by al Qaeda, and from my understanding when 9/11 happened he was out of the country, but once he saw the U.S. had been attacked, he made a conscious choice to try and get back to Afghanistan," Col. Morris Davis, the chief Guantanamo prosecutor, told Australian radio today. "We really and truly want to get this case to trial as soon as possible."

By Phil Hirschkorn