PROMINENT Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, says he continues to suffer post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from five and a half year incarceration which included being subject to “medical experiments”.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Speaking at the Bellingen Memorial Hall on Saturday, to a sympathetic crowd of around 150 supporters who paid $10 to hear him, Mr Hicks remained vague about his past association with Islamic extremists.
The touchy subject of his 1999 conversion to and subsequent renunciation of Islam was not raised during his hour-long talk.
Instead, Mr Hicks’ conversation focused on claims of mistreatment following his 2001 capture in Afghanistan by Northern Alliance forces.
“Enough time has passed that documents have been leaked – there’s been a number of whistleblowers that worked for the FBI (US Federal Bureau of Investigation), and US military personnel involved in torturing us, who now have a guilty conscience, have PTSD and suffer themselves from nightmares,” Mr Hicks said, adding: “(whistleblower website) Wikileaks have also shed light on these practices at Guantanamo.”
He said he continues to suffer nightmares linked to his being forced by jailers to take unidentified medicine.
“There was a lot of forced injections, forced tablets. There was one time in August 2002 that I was given injections on two occasions where mentally I was fully aware of what was happening to me but physically I had no control over my own body,” Mr Hicks said.
For many, in Bellingen, David Hicks remains a folk hero following his release from US custody in 2007.
However, he made clear he has no time for journalists or any needling questions into his past association with al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked Islamic militants.
US military prosecutors allege Mr Hicks provided “material support for terrorism,” engaged in hostile action against Indian forces on the Line of Control between Pakistan and Indian Kashmir and went to Afghanistan funded by a proscribed terrorist group, Lashkar-i-Tayiba.
In Afghanistan, Mr Hicks allegedly met with 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden and complained to him about the lack of training material in English.
But on Saturday, this chapter of his life was off-limits.
Asked by this reporter to clarify his views on his former Islamic associates, Mr Hicks’ wife Aloysia Brooks intervened, whispering to her husband: “He (Mark Dodd) is a journalist.”
Mr Hicks then replied, he was “here for the public and not for journalists”.
“I’ve attempted to engage with the media for a few years now and I’ve been screwed over every single time – the questions you’ve asked have been answered in the book. Because you are a journalist, I won’t answer any of your questions."
