Rat in the ranks: David Hicks and the representations of justice and threat in the 'War on Terror'

In December 2001, the Australian 'Taliban fighter' David Hicks was captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Hicks was subsequently transferred to Guantanamo Bay by the US military, where he has remained for five years awaiting a military commission trial that has been roundly condemned for its partisan approach to justice. David Hicks' imprisonment as an alleged 'terrorist' saw him branded by both government officials and the media as a 'rat in the ranks': a traitor to Australia's role in the Coalition of the Willing and the embodiment of Australia's 'new' insecurity about the threat in 'our own backyards'. Indeed, governmental response to Hicks' imprisonment has focussed on themes of 'otherness', where the allegations of Hicks' terrorist actions have served as legitimation for the apparent circumvention of his legal and civil rights. Nonetheless, subsequent media reportage has become increasingly ambivalent towards both US and Australian approaches to justice, allowing more discursive space for dissenting viewpoints in the public arena. By analysing various representations of Hicks by Australian governmental authorities and newspaper media, this paper examines the discourse of the 'terrorist threat' in an age of insecurity and how this discourse manipulates traditional understandings of citizenship and justice.