David Hicks enters his sixth year of detention at Guantánamo Bay

Hicks was captured by the Northern Alliance among Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001, then sold to the US military which transported him to Guantánamo in early 2002. On January 11, he will enter the sixth year of his detention in the notorious jail, where he has been subjected to various forms of torture and long periods of solitary confinement.

Over the past year, Hicks has become increasingly withdrawn and disoriented. On December 19, he refused to speak with his parents in a long-planned phone call. His father Terry told the media that his son was at “breaking point” and had refused to come to the phone despite two separate calls made that day by the family. Applications for the call were made six months earlier.

“We believe he’s too emotionally stressed... He’s really struggling, he’s just not coping,” Terry Hicks said. “For him to do that shows that he’s just not right. The emotional stress on him must be terrible.”

The most recent conversation Terry Hicks had with David was on July 7, 2006. He said it had been very difficult at that time and his son was virtually unintelligible for the first 30 minutes of the 90-minute phone call. The Hicks family has only spoken with David four times, including during a brief visit to Guantánamo in 2004, since he was incarcerated.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/dhic-j08.shtml