Hicks has been sentenced.
In an earlier post, I expressed my hope that the Hicks conviction and sentencing judgment would serve as a teaching moment regarding the heinousness of terrorist violence and its denunciation through rule of law. I’m not so sure that has happened.
Assuredly, the judge read the 35 admissions Hicks had made. Hicks acknowledged each. There were some quibbles in the plea negotiations. The NY Times reports:
One paragraph of the charges said, for example, that Mr. Hicks had watched television footage of the Sept. 11 attacks at a friend’s house in Pakistan and had “expressed his approval of the attacks.” But the paragraph Mr. Hicks agreed to said that the friend “has said he interpreted his gestures as approval of the attacks.”
During the hearing, the military judge disclosed an extraordinary series of concessions Mr. Hicks had made to his American captors in negotiations for the plea deal, in which he admitted material support to a terrorist organization.
The deal included a statement by Mr. Hicks that he “has never been illegally treated” while a captive, despite claims of beatings he had made in the past. It also included a promise not to pursue suits over the treatment he received while in detention and “not to communicate in any way with the media” for a year.
Thoughts?
