I found this article interesting, and I hope that David Hicks can get a trial in Australia. I know prison is a terrible place, and I in my opinion, he should be bought back here, and be convicted under our laws, rather that the US.


Last Update: Tuesday, March 9, 2004. 2:54pm (AEDT)
David Hicks is being held at Guantanamo Bay (File photo).

David Hicks is being held at Guantanamo Bay (File photo). (ABC TV)
Hicks's lawyer welcomes prison decision

Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks's laywer has welcomed Federal Parliament's decision to allow any prison sentence he may receive to be served in Australia.

Mr Hicks and fellow Australian Mamdouh Habib have been held in Cuba without charge for more than two years.

Last week, Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said charges would be laid against the pair soon and heard by a US military commission.

Mr Hicks's lawyer, Stephen Kenny, welcomes the decision on imprisonment but says any trial should also be held in Australia.

"The American super-maximum security prisons are dreadful places and something we don't ever want Australians being in and it is certainly preferable if they are guilty of something to serve their time in Australian jail," he said.

"But that's assuming they're guilty of something, which we know may not be true."

Mr Kenny says Mr Hicks's military trial will not provide the standard of justice he would receive if he were tried in Australia.

"To bring them back and imprison them here is disappointing but I do support the fact that I don't want to see them languishing in maximum security prisons in the United States, if they were ever convicted of anything," he said.

I agree, Kyla. David Hicks is an Australian citizen and as such he should be tried in Australia. I believe that if he is found guilty of he should be punished within the guidelines set out by Australian law as opposed to that of American.
He deserves a fair trial, and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

There is a documentary on SBS about him tomorrow night.

(this is from the SBS website)

On Thursday, March 18 at 8.30pm SBS Television launches a new weekly Australian documentary strand, STORYLINE AUSTRALIA, with the world premiere of the Australian documentary THE PRESIDENT VERSUS DAVID HICKS.

In January 2002 David Hicks was picked up in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and handed over to the US military. He was taken to the American Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for interrogation and has been held there in a small cage ever since. President Bush has labelled him an “unlawful combatant.” This means that he is allowed none of the rights of ordinary prisoners-of-war. No charges have been laid against him and only recently has he been given access to a lawyer.

How did a 26 year old, former stockman from Adelaide, Australia, end up as a Taliban fighter? THE PRESIDENT VERSUS DAVID HICKS sets out to answer this question.

The film follows the journey made by Terry Hicks, David’s father, who has never before travelled outside Australia as he traces his son’s footsteps in an attempt to understand what has happened to him.

Terry Hicks visits the Islamic school in Pakistan where David studied to become a Muslim missionary and then crosses into Afghanistan just as David had done a few years before. He visits a bombed out Al Qaeda camp where David may have received training and travels deep into Taliban country to meet a former detainee of Guantanamo Bay, Jon Mohammed. Mohammed who was in the cell next to David and knew him well. Piece by piece a picture emerges as Terry grapples to understand his son. Towards the end of his journey Terry meets the Northern Alliance commander who captured David.

David wrote long and surprisingly eloquent letters to his family and friends and it is these which provide the “map” for the documentary – from Adelaide to Japan and on to battle in Kosovo where he seems first to have become interested in Islam. None of this intimate correspondence, which continues up to the present, has ever been made public before now. Completing the image of David Hicks as he appears in these letters are the recollections of his father, stepmother and friends.

THE PRESIDENT VERSUS DAVID HICKS is about a man who cannot be seen or heard, locked in the legal limbo which is Guantanamo Bay. In this film through the determination of the father and through David’s own words we come to know him and to begin to understand him.

THE PRESIDENT VERSUS DAVID HICKS is an Olsen Levy production financed by the Film Finance Corporation Australia and developed in association with the Australian Film Commission. Produced in association with SBS Independent. Terry Hicks’ travel expenses were paid for by private donors.


Related SBS Website : http://www.sbs.com.au/sbsi

Wow thanks for posting that.
I personally think that he was in the Islam faith, and got brain washed along the way. I have read the Koran, and have great respect for all faiths. I dont believe, without any charges that he should be just held, they have no reason to do that.

David Hicks may of been involved in the Taliban, but he is still and australian citizen, and he doesnt deserve to be punished to the fullest extent (on whatever charges they think up). I think he needs to be bought home, and face any criminal proceedings here, as we, were involved in the battle in Afghanistan as well. They go on and on about Human rights, but keeping a man in a cage without any charges, and denying him a lawyer until recently is wrong.
I hope he comes back here and gets a fair trial. Our Prime Minister should be ashamed, and stick up for us as Australian citizens, why cant our minister of immigration step in, David Hicks is still a human being, not an animal.
This is my opinion anyway.
There is options anyway here, that he can be deported, and treated properly. I just cant believe this. Us as Australians better be careful if a allied country gets you.
What gets me, is that my husband is a US citizen, and they went out to the prison and made sure that he was being treated humanely under the United Nations code. MY GOD... look what they are doing to David Hicks. Australia can step in, my question is what is going wrong?

Law change 'no concern for Hicks'

March 17, 2004

CHANGES to anti-mercenary laws were unlikely to affect Australian terror suspect David Hicks, his lawyer said today.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has suggested the changes to allow easier prosecution of Australians who serve with terrorist organisations abroad.

But Stephen Kenny, defence counsel for Hicks, said the Government was aware it could not make the legislation retrospective.

"Retrospective legislation is clearly inappropriate and is unlikely to be valid in any event," Mr Kenny said.

He also questioned any move by the Government to create a new offence of consorting with terrorists.


In many places consorting laws were being abandoned because of the difficulties they raised in respect of family members who could become the target of unfair legal action, he said.

"They may become the target of prosecution because of a situation they cannot avoid," Mr Kenny said.

Hicks has been in US custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since late in 2001 after being detained in Afghanistan.

Another Australian in US custody, Mamdouh Habib, was detained in Pakistan around the same time.

Addressing a conference on security and government in Canberra today, Mr Ruddock said changes to the foreign recruitment and incursion Act were urgent and pressing.

"The reason is quite clear," he said.

"In looking at the matters of Hicks and Habib where we sought to see whether there was a basis on which they could be prosecuted in Australia for their behaviour abroad...we found that enactment did not enable us to deal with a range of situations particularly where terrorist organisations are in fact instruments of a state such as the Taliban." Mr Ruddock told the conference the Government was also considering measures designed to protect sensitive security information which might be disclosed during court cases.

"We have been seeking advice from the Australian law reform commission," he said.