Australia's Gitmo inmate may be home this year: Downer

oops, its an election year, better appease the growing masses of people who see this massive injustice of being held in prison for 6 years with NO charge. quick johnny, be seen to do something finally!

 

Lets see what 2007 has brought us. After years and years of denying climate change, you are now a convert and you finally believe what scientists have been warning us about for years.
Now, after 6 years of flatly refusing Hicks his rights to justice and only being informed last week that if Hick's trial was to go ahead, you could very, very easily be charged with war crimes in Australia, according to Australian law. Your government now starts moving to have him released before the election in November. Seems justice is possible when your political future is on the line. This absolutely reeks of politics more than true justice. The sooner Howard finds himself in the Hague, the better!!

 

Why would anyone want to do that?
And why would Australia want someone back that utterly stupid?
Send him to Iran or something.

 

Is a Muslim convert,

But even the dumbest idiot does not deserve 5 years in Jail without being charged...

He has rights, that have been denied

America (and Australia) what double standards you have

 

"Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 alongside Taliban forces. He also allegedly received training at al-Qaida camps.
He pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy before a U.S. commission in August 2004, but those charges were dropped when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the commission unlawful last year."

Looks like he was pretty stupid to me. What does a father of 2 go to a foriegn country to train at AQ camps for? To me he's a POW. And he did plead guilty to those charges and that can't be denied so he does acknowledge his stupidity. Too bad the US commission was ruled unlawful or the charges would have stuck. But his acknowlegedment remains.

 

it's Mohammed Dawood.

Why don't the media when use it when discussing his case?

Are they Islamophobic or something?

http://www.answers.com/topic/david-hicks

 

What double standard. If we treated him the way our enemy treats us, we would just lop off his head and be done with it.

 

-this guy got off easy. How long is the settlement of Anna Nicole Smith estate gonna take? -at least 10-20 years. Anna Nicole still has not settled after the death of her second billionaire husband (1995) and now she has her estate to settle.

 

The legal process may take a long time, but that all comes AFTER charges are laid. For Hicks, they still haven't laid charges against him (except those earlier found to be unlawful). That would be like the police pulling you over while driving home, putting you in a holding cell for 5 years, and only then deciding whether to charge you with something or not. That's 5 years where he has been denied to opportunity to defend his innocence, usually a key bastion in the legal system of any free and democratic country. I'm still at a loss to see how the US legal system has allowed this to happen. It is in violation of all that it is supposed to stand for and an obvious indication that the US concept of freedom is much more shallow than many of its citizens would like to admit.

The Australian government should have, like the British government already has, got off its backside and brought Hicks back to Australia for a fair trail (which it seems is unavailable to him in the US), where he can be charged, most likely found guilty, and locked away to whatever punishment the legal system deems fit to give him.

 

-he was in Cuba. G-Mo is a perpetual+hostile lease of Cuban land. The base is an American base, but the land is indeed Cuban.

An Australian, caught in Afghanistan as a guerrila warrior during an act of war, then extradited to Cuba?

Why didn't this guy just plead guility like in the Japanese system? He would have been out in a year or two and would have spared his lawyers and family all that misery?

If anything can be learned from this: -I would say do not be a guerrilla warrior. Wear a patch or insignia on your jacket. Even a cap stating you are in the Nike army is better than nothing. A classy pin would be acceptable.

 

"Why didn't this guy just plead guility like in the Japanese system?"

He hasn't been charged yet, so he can't plead anything, unless he wants to plead "guilty to whatever crime you decided later to charge me with", then they can throw the book at him. Of course, he could have pleaded guilty to the earlier charges by the military tribunal that was later deemed unlawful, but that would have left him outside the safety of the actual judical system. Not a smart move.

And that's the problem. They can charge him for being with the Taliban, training at an Al Qaida camp, but that's about all. They obviously want to charge him with something more significant, but all they've proven so far is that once the allied troops arrived, he left the front line without firing a shot at them. This is why its a disgrace that Howard is only now starting to pressure the US to charge him, after more than 5 years! Perhaps the American military can learn a few lessons from the Japanese police, who seem to prosecute an awfully high percentage of people based on "confessions", which tends to solve the lack of evidence problem...