'Aussie Taliban' to get his day in court
The imprisonment of David Hicks has stoked anti-American sentiment in the longtime US-ally nation.
from the March 26, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Hicks’s troubled road to Guantánamo
There was little sympathy for Hicks among the Australian public when he was first captured. A drifter with a background of
petty crime, he managed to avoid prison and was instead sent on a rehabilitation project teaching rural skills to troublesome
youths. He then worked as a jackaroo, as a kangaroo hunter, and later got a job in a chicken processing factory.
A growing interest in Islam led him to the Balkans, where, in 1999, he fought for the Kosovo Liberation Front. He was photographed
cradling a bazooka.
After Kosovo, Hicks converted to Islam in 2000, and a year later, he turned up in Pakistan and then Afghanistan, where he
allegedly joined the Taliban. The Australian government believes that during his time in Afghanistan he attended Al Qaeda
training camps.
The president of the Law Council of Australia, Tim Bugg, believes the Hicks case has become a matter of great embarrassment
for the Australian government.
“Our concern is that political considerations have overwhelmed issues of essential principle, which form the cradle of the
justice system in this country,” Mr. Bugg says. “We have argued that he should be put before a regular American court or a
court martial. But the president won’t allow non-US citizens to go through that process. Canberra should insist that he be
released and returned to Australia.”
Prime Minister John Howard has argued that, were Hicks to be repatriated, he would get off scot-free, because Australia’s
antiterrorism legislation was introduced after the offenses he is alleged to have committed.
But even Mr. Howard and his ministers, sensing a change in the public mood, have voiced concerns that the Hicks case has dragged
on far too long.
“The acceptability of him being kept in custody diminishes by the day,” Howard said recently.
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