Report on Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. (Hicks)

In July 2006, The New York Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) published its Report on Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This report is based on accounts drawn directly from habeas counsels’ unclassified notes reflecting prisoner statements made to counsel during in-person interviews conducted at Guantánamo beginning in the fall of 2004. Some information for that report was taken also from public sources compiled in Cecili Thompson Williams & Kristine A. Huskey, Detention, Interrogation, and Torture at Guantánamo Bay: Materials and Case Files, a report published by the law firm of Shearman and Sterling LLP in October 2005. The testimony by or about Mr. David Hicks in the CCR report can be found below.

[CSHRA NOTE: On March 26, 2007, David Hicks entered into a plea agreement at his military commissions trial. This agreement allowed him to leave Guantánamo and serve only nine months of his seven year sentence in Australia. In this agreement, Mr. Hicks made the following statement: "I have never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody and control of the United States. This includes the period after my capture and transfer to US custody in Afghanistan in December 2001, through the entire period of my detention by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I agree that this agreement puts to rest any claims of mistreatment by the United States."]

(CCR50) David Hicks was in solitary for almost a year in Camp Echo (Center for Constitutional Rights 2006, 17).

(CCR51) Other prisoners who report experiencing sleep deprivation include Mr. Hicks, Mr. Abbasi, Mr. Habib, Mr. Esmail, and Mr. Abd al-Malik al-Wahab (Center for Constitutional Rights 2006, 22f).

Hicks Aff. at 4-5, Hicks v. Bush, 397 F. Supp.2d 36 (D.D.C. 2005) (No. 02-299).