WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH DAVID HICKS?

[lennie]

Govt says Hicks a dangerous man
from ABC Online


The Federal Government says David Hicks is a dangerous man, and it will be up to the Australian Federal Police to decide whether to apply a control order when he is released from jail.

Hicks will return to Australia, and is expected to be free from jail by the end of the year.

His American lawyer, Major Michael Mori, has told Channel Seven that Hicks just wants to get home, finish school and go to university.

"I don't think he'll present any danger to anyone," he said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer disagrees.

"I consider anybody who goes and fights for al-Qaeda to be dangerous," he said.

Mr Downer says the AFP must decide whether to place a control order on Hicks.

Treasurer Peter Costello is also taking a hard line.

"For those people who say poor David Hicks, I say the poor dead and their families that died in the World Trade Centre," he said.

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What should we do with David Hicks is something that all peace loving Australians should consider seeing that he will soon be back on his home ground. Some may assume that he would no longer be a threat to Australia wheras others may think the opposite and consider him a threat. The fact is he worked with Al Queada, a distinct aggressor toward the Australian way of life and a common world wide terrorist organisation that are responsible for thousands of deaths. Give us your thoughts please?

[abraham]

David Hicks has paid the price for his escapades with al quaeda and should be free to walk an resume a normal life.

[bill]

Don't agree abraham. David Hicks conspired to work with an organisation that is responsible (and they brag about it) for the deaths of many thousands of innocent people, some of them, his fellow countrymen. I think that behaviour such as that requires a prison sentence. Why should he be allowed to come back here and walk free in a society that he condemned and conspired against? Let him free and he will become a hero. A hero he is not.

[cheryl]

This David Hicks is nothing more than a traitor to Australia and some are welcoming him back with open arms. What on earth is wrong with people. The survivors from other wars that Australia has been involved with must be horrified. Bring him back alright but Jail him as a Prisoner of War. He is an enemy of Australia and the would be do-gooders want to let him walk free. I say - NO WAY.

[bill]

My son's case is not over: Terry Hicks


The father of confessed terrorist David Hicks says he still wants to know what evidence led to his son's five-year detention at Guantanamo Bay.

The 31-year-old Adelaide-born father of two is expected back in Australia by late next month to finish his sentence, after pleading guilty to supporting terrorism before a military tribunal on March 31.

Hicks, who was held by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay for five years after he was captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, was sentenced to seven years, with all but nine months suspended.

In Melbourne to speak at a rally, Mr Hicks told reporters his son's case was still not resolved even though he would return to Australia by May 29.

"We still need to know what this so-called evidence (is) that they had against David," Mr Hicks said.

"David's pleaded guilty to nothing - all he's done is pleaded guilty to supplying material support for terrorism, but what is it? No one knows.

"If David Hicks is guilty of anything, what's wrong with our proper judiciary court system to test out this evidence?"

Mr Hicks also spoke out against a 12-month ban on speaking to the media imposed by the military tribunal on his son, saying it was political.

"David's pleaded guilty under a plea bargain (but) when you look at the evidence, all he's been charged with is by association," he said.

"It's quite strange too that all this great evidence they've had and been touting about for the last five years and he gets nine months."

Mr Hicks said he did not know in which Australian prison David would serve his sentence.

He said David may speak out after the gag period ends but should be allowed to sell his story.

"We know the law says that you can't make profit or gain out of these things but I think David should still be given a chance to speak out on how he's been treated and how the Australian government have treated him," he said.

"I think John Howard still has a lot to answer for."

Although the government has said David owed them more than $300,000 for what were believed to be legal costs, Mr Hicks said nothing was said about him paying it back.

"Maybe they should let him write a book - that would make enough money to pay the government back and they should be satisfied with that, but no, they've gagged him on that for the rest of his life."

The government has said it would not attempt to prevent Hicks speaking to the media, but that it would prevent him selling his story under proceeds of crime legislation.

Greens leader Bob Brown, who spoke at the rally at the State Library of Victoria, said he did not believe people should profit from misdemeanours.

"But Hicks has pleaded guilty under threat of going back to Guantanamo Bay and which of us wouldn't consider that under those circumstances," he said.

[lennie]

Hicks due to leave Guantanamo
By Washington correspondent Michael Rowland
from ABC Online

Convicted Australian terrorism supporter David Hicks is expected leave Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba within the next few hours.

Hicks is being transferred to Adelaide's Yatala Prison to serve the remainder of his nine-month sentence for providing material support for terrorism.

He is expected to have left Guantanamo by the end of the day on a jet chartered by the Australian Government.

Hicks is being accompanied by South Australian prison officials, federal police officers and his Adelaide lawyer, David McLeod.

He spent five years and four months at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

Hicks's father Terry says there is still no indication exactly when his son will return to Australia.

He says the only guarantee his family has been given is that consular officers will tell them when his son is in Yatala Prison.

In other developments at Guantanamo Bay, a US Navy lawyer who worked at the naval base has been sentenced to six months' jail for leaking the names of prisoners detained there.

Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz sent the names of 550 inmates in an unmarked Valentine's Day card to a human rights lawyer, who subsequently alerted military authorities.

Diaz was convicted of passing information to an unauthorised person and communicating secret information that could be used to injure the US.

[Eddie]

Not knowing ALL the facts I say leave him alone .

[Flash]

DAVID Hicks will not pursue action against the Australian or US governments despite startling admissions from the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay that the military commission process that convicted him was politically influenced and that evidence was obtained through prisoner abuse.

Hicks's lawyer David McLeod said last night that Hick's instructions to him remained firm: he simply "wanted to get on with life".

However, Mr McLeod added that if Hicks chose to challenge what had happened to him, there would be a number of paths he could pursue.

"If the wheels start to fall off the validity of the military commission wagon, those circumstances may permit Hicks to agitate the fairness and lawfulness and validity of what happened to him in Australia," Mr McLeod said.

Appearing as a witness before the same tribunal in which he prosecuted Hicks, US Air Force Colonel Mo Davis said yesterday politicians had forced him to prosecute Hicks.

Colonel Davis, who quit as the chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay late last year because of outside interference, said that, if it had been his choice, Hicks would not have been charged because the case against him was not serious enough.

Hicks pleaded guilty to a single minor charge of providing material support for terrorism as part of a plea bargain that saw him returned to Australia to serve seven months in an Adelaide jail after five years' detention in Guantanamo Bay. He was released at the end of December.

Colonel Davis said he had "inherited" the Hicks prosecution, but he had wanted to focus on cases serious enough to carry 20-year jail terms and the case against the Australian did not meet that test.

Hicks's father, Terry, said yesterday the testimony ended any doubt that his son was charged with war crimes for purely political reasons. "Mo Davis is re-iterating what we have been saying for quite a while," Mr Hicks told The Australian. "It has all been rigged politically and now Mo Davis has come out and said it."

A spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland said Labor was not privy to communications between the Howard government and US authorities and questions on that should be put to the Coalition.

Former prime minister John Howard declined to comment on Colonel's Davis testimony and former foreign minister Alexander Downer was unavailable.

Terry Hicks said his son was still undergoing psychological counselling and recovering from his imprisonment.

Colonel Davis made his remarks in a pre-trial hearing for Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan, who is accused of being the driver of Osama bin Laden.

As a witness, Colonel Davis said the military commissions, which exist outside the normal military justice system, had been corrupted by politics and inappropriate influence.

Hicks is the only Guantanamo Bay detainee to have been convicted and his is the only case to have a resolution before the commissions.