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Australia Will Ask for Guantanamo Bay Detainee if Charges are not Filed
Rob McGuirk
Associated Press
August 15, 2006
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australia's government said for the first time Tuesday it will ask the United States to repatriate a suspected Taliban fighter held for more than four years at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unless fresh charges are brought against him.
David Hicks, 31, had been charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit war crimes and aiding the enemy in Afghanistan in late 2001. But the charges were quashed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that U.S. military commissions trying the detainees were illegal.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said new military commissions will be established, and Hicks will be charged again later this year.
"If the United States ... were not to proceed with charges against Hicks, we would seek the same outcome that we obtained with Habib," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio, referring to a second Australian previously held by the U.S.
Mamdouh Habib, 50, flew home to Sydney last year at Australia's request after spending three years at Guantanamo Bay without being charged.
Hicks' plight has been highlighted in Australia this week with the arrival of his Pentagon-appointed lawyer Maj. Michael Mori, who plans to lobby federal lawmakers in the capital Canberra for his client's release.
Government and opposition lawmakers on Tuesday welcomed the prospect of Hicks being brought home if he isn't charged.
"The process has been long enough now in the U.S.," Sen. Barnaby Jones said of Hicks' more than four years of incarceration.
The center-right government, a staunch ally of the U.S. in its war on terror, says Hicks could not be charged if he were repatriated because his alleged terrorist associations were not outlawed in Australia until 2002.
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