The Australian
Terry Hicks has indicated that his son is stubborn and rebellious. Perhaps after his five-year stint in Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks will now be prepared to listen to counsel from wiser heads as he navigates the difficult road ahead.
It seems perfectly clear to me that whether or not David Hicks wants to tell his story, the media in this country will not leave him alone until someone or some conglomerate has his name on a dotted line. If he finds a way to profit from telling about his experiences, then best of British to him, I say. Even if he decides, as we’re told he already has, not to bother with cash for chat, I believe he’ll never been granted any form of leeway in the resumption of a normal life until someone has his story, either by proxy or in person.
The stories now appearing in the media, like shotgun pellets in a rabbit carcass, are all over the place and seriously damaging. This is the media at its worst. Hounds baying after the sniff of a story which might just win the author a Walkley. To bad if the ultimate accolades rebound on the teller adversely. That’s a minor consideration, as Sales indicates occured with Mamdouh Habib. What of Habib now? A dud story, handled badly and never followed through. Few would realise that Habib is still engaged in legal battles to achieve some kind of clearance of his name. Even fewer could care. We know what the media tell us he was/is and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
The Hicks saga is a long way from over. In many ways, it is now in limbo until New Years Eve. We’ll hear snippets of his sojourn in Yatala prison, sufficient to keep his tale in the awareness of the reading public by an ever more frustrated media, until the day comes when he exits Yatala. Then we’ll see again what we’re seeing now. We simply won’t hear the baying as the hounds fall over themselves in a bid to get through to the source of fresh blood.