Cheney, Howard 'did deal on Hicks'

Source: Big Pond
US Vice-President Dick Cheney agreed to a deal with Prime Minister John Howard to release former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, a US media report says.
The report, published in Harper's Magazine, cites an unnamed US military officer saying that a military staffer was present when Mr Cheney interfered directly to seal Hicks's plea bargain deal.
"He did it, apparently, as part of a deal cut with Howard," the unnamed source is quoted as saying.
"I kept thinking: this is the sort of thing that used to go on behind the Iron Curtain, not in America.
"And then it struck me how much this entire process had disintegrated into a political charade. It's demoralising for all of us."
After five years of detention in Guantanamo Bay, a deal was sealed for 32-year-old Hicks to serve a nine-month prison sentence in Australia, subject to him pleading guilty to a charge of providing material support for terrorism.

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