Former Australian detainee at Guantanamo Bay makes claims after damning report into CIA torture methods revealed

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A former Australian detainee of Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks, has claimed Australian government officials “knew the entire time” about the torture to which he was allegedly subjected at the facility, techniques which have been slammed in a landmark US senate report as brutal and ineffective.



Hicks attempted to interrupt the speech of the attorney general, George Brandis, at the 2014 Human Rights Awards ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday with questions about the damning torture report.



The 39-year-old spent six years confined at the facility from 2001 and has detailed extensive periods of solitary confinement, severe beatings and forced druggings at the hands of his American captors.



These torture methods and others, including waterboarding, extended use of stress positions, and “rectal rehydration”, were laid bare in a report by the US senate intelligence committee released on Wednesday.



The committee chairwoman, senator Dianne Feinstein, said the torture “regularly resulted in fabricated information” and was “a stain on our values and on our history”.



Speaking to Guardian Australia at the 2014 Human Rights Awards, Hicks said release of the report “makes it harder for those who deny that torture took place [at Guantanamo Bay].



“There are Australian officials .... who knew the entire time what was happening to me, and what the practices were in Guantanamo, even though they told the Australian public that everything was fine, that I was being treated humanely,” Hicks claim.



His father, Terry, who campaigned for years for his son’s release, said: “Now that this has come about, someone has to be held accountable.”



“Unfortunately, there will still be cover ups, there will still be denials, but it’s there in black and white, it comes from the CIA,” he said.



Hicks was eventually released in 2007 after agreeing to pleading guilty to supporting a terrorist organisation, but the plea was widely seen as a political fix.



On Wednesday night Hicks attended the Human Rights Awards in Sydney where he heckled Brandis.

“Hey, my name is David Hicks!” he shouted, as Senator Brandis wrapped up his address at the function.



“I was tortured for five-and-a-half years in Guantanamo Bay in the full knowledge of your party! What do you have to say?”

Senator Brandis walked off the stage at the Museum of Contemporary Arts without responding.