Short Shadow has left a comment on Miss Eagle's previous post about David Hick's homecoming. Miss E doesn't want such a worthwhile comment left unnoticed so is posting it here:
Unfortunately Premier Rann seems bent on squeezing as many populist brownie points as he can out of the last few months of Hicks' incarceration by insisting that he's kept in conditions which resemble Guantanamo as closely as possible. In SA prisoners approaching the end of their sentences are allowed to access various pre-release programs etc to prepare them for their eventual release. Rann has not only ruled this out in Hicks' case but he's also banging on about how after his release he'll still be a major threat to the community, and demanding that his liberty be restricted further by control orders and the like once he is set free. Given that the US Military Commission imposed a much lighter sentence than all the Rumsfeldian hyperbole (Hicks "the worst of the worst"?) seemed to suggest some people, hearing Mr Rann's drum banging, might smell a rodent and conclude that the Premier is trying to create a smokescreen over the perception that his government's dealing with crime, and perhaps corruption, is sub-optimal.
