Two years. That's the length of time the Barwon 13 have spent in prison, waiting for a trial.

Since late 2005, these 13 men accused of terrorism have been held in the maximum security Acacia wing of Victoria's Barwon Prison. They are in solitary confinement for up to eighteen hours a day, with no physical contact allowed with any visitors – wives, children, parents – older than sixteen. Visits are conducted in boxes through thick glass and the men are strip-searched before and after each visit; their arms and legs are chained with manacles and leg-irons the whole time. They are in more severe conditions than the convicted murderers imprisoned alongside them – and yet they have not had a trial.

Their names are Hany Taha, Nacer Benbrika, Shane Kent, Aiman Joud, Fadal Sayadi, Amer Haddara, Izzydeen Atik, Abdullah Merhi, Shoue Hammoud, Bassem Raad, Ezzit Raad, Ahmed Raad and Majed Raad. Their lives have been ruined, their families deprived of income, their community has been divided and has learnt to live with fear. And yet they are accused of less – and are almost without doubt "guilty" of less – than any of the more well-known victims of the terror laws, such as David Hicks and Jack Thomas.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention considered the case in May 2007. They found that the "conditions of detention, as described by the source and not contested by the government, are particularly severe, especially taking into account that they have been imposed upon persons who have not yet been declared guilty and who must, accordingly, be presumed innocent".

The Australian Federal Police and the government have yet to demonstrate how the Barwon 13 men are a danger to anybody. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that their detention is political, part of the ongoing fraud of the "war on terror" as an election-winning cover for the erosion of civil liberties.

In November 2005, just as the Workplace Relations Bill was introduced into parliament, John Howard announced that Australia was facing a potential terrorist threat, and an amendment to anti-terrorism legislation was rushed through parliament. This amendment focused on a single word – references to "the terrorist act" were changed to "a terrorist act". It was a significant change, however, making it possible for people to be charged with preparing for an unspecified terrorist attack – one without a date, a target or any definite plans – as opposed to a specific, planned terrorist attack. It was the culmination of attempts to broaden definitions of terrorism, to make terrorism offences a matter of attitudes or even thoughts, rather than any specific acts.

One week later, 10 Muslim men were arrested in Melbourne, while another seven were arrested in Sydney (more men were arrested in Melbourne shortly afterwards). Politicians – federal and state, Liberal and Labor – immediately joined Howard in declaring that Australia had been saved from a terror attack. The then Victorian Premier Steve Bracks announced that police had disrupted "probably the most serious preparation for a terrorist attack that we've seen in Australia". Victoria's Police Commissioner Christine Nixon added that "We are certainly of the belief that there was the potential for great harm to be done to the community, we have thwarted that."

The "most serious preparation for a terrorist attack"?

The Melbourne men, the Barwon 13, have never been charged with preparing for any specific terrorist act. In fact, the amendment to the terror laws was necessary precisely because there was no such act in preparation. The men were simply charged with being members of a terrorist organisation. This organisation is unnamed and unspecified – in fact, it simply consists of the accused men themselves. Moreover, when the men were brought before a committal hearing in August last year, there was little, if any, evidence to suggest that there was any relationship at all between the men in Sydney and those in Melbourne.

The prosecution presented 16,400 hours of taped conversations and 66,000 pages of documents as evidence, a result of their six month surveillance exercise. Yet despite this, even the prosecutor admitted the legal case against the 13 men was "largely circumstantial". Much of the evidence consists simply of conversations between the men, leading to criticism that they are being accused of "thought crimes" – arrested for things that they thought or said, rather than anything that they did. There have been no allegations that the Melbourne men planned to damage property or injure people.

However, despite this, the men were committed for trial, refused bail and have now spent two years inside Barwon prison. Their trial is scheduled for early 2008, and we can expect more hysteria from the media at that time. There seems little likelihood of a fair trial, given that so many unsubstantiated allegations against the men have been made by politicians at such a high level. Perhaps because they were initially branded terrorists by the media, police and politicians (even though subsequent evidence does not support such a claim), there has been little community outrage about their lengthy incarceration in extreme conditions without conviction.

Unlike the campaigns in defence of David Hicks, Jack Thomas and Mohammad Haneef, Civil Rights Defence has struggled to get media publicity and public support for these men. Since the disastrous brawl at the first court appearance between Barwon 13 family members and media (which one lawyer involved with the case suggests was police instigated), there has been little media attention, let alone sympathetic articles or current affairs items on television as in the cases of Hicks or Thomas. Could the reason be that the Barwon 13, in addition to being Muslim, are mostly Lebanese? Or is the media simply complying with the Coalition government's political, rather than legal priorities – keeping quiet about the case until a sensational "disclosure" enables the government to highlight the terrorist threat to boost flagging polls or endorse further attacks on civil liberties?

What can be done?

Civil Rights Defence has been trying to raise awareness about this case since the men were first arrested. Actions have included demonstrations outside the committal hearing, as well as two bus trips to Barwon Prison, 40km west of Melbourne, which aimed to highlight the fact that unconvicted prisoners were being held in harsher conditions than convicted "gangland" figures such as Carl Williams. At the time, state Labor ministers such as Rob Hulls were demanding the Howard government act to repatriate David Hicks from Guantanamo Bay while at the same time administering not dissimilar regimes just outside Geelong, complete with solitary confinement, shackles and orange jumpsuits.

Civil Rights Defence is a campaign group that has organised actions for some years to campaign for individual terror-law victims and for the repeal of the anti-terror laws generally. Our standpoint is that, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the people accused, there is nothing that they are accused of doing that couldn't be dealt with under conventional laws. As it is, the anti-terror laws have opened a Pandora's box of possible future abuses. If, as in the case of Jack Thomas, the Federal Police can simply put a control order on someone they don't like, even after he has been acquitted of all terror offences in court, where does that leave the rest of us?

It's important to remember that protest really does make a difference – even with the Howard government. When Civil Rights Defence organised a protest for David Hicks in 2005 we could barely attract twelve people. At end of 2006, about 5,000 braved 40 degree heat in Federation Square over the same issue. Nothing had changed, except that thousands of protest actions – from letter-writing to protests and speaking tours by Terry Hicks and David's lawyers – had influenced enough people for it to become an electoral problem for the Howard government. Suddenly this supposedly appalling individual ("the worst of the worst") had his imprisonment in Guantánamo cut short. A deal was struck and he was brought home.

We can do better in the case of the Barwon 13. But we need active support. For details or to get involved, CRD's contact details are provided elsewhere in this edition.

Gerard Morel is a long-time member of Civil Rights Defence.