Hicks pleads guilty to terror charge after 5 years in Guantanamo

Cthippo · 27 Mar 2007

AFP said:

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Australian David Hicks has pleaded guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism before a US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, more than five years after he was detained in
Afghanistan.

Looking somber with his hands clasped in front of him, Hicks, 31, stood beside his US military lawyer who entered a guilty plea to the charge of providing "material support for terrorism."

The plea late on Monday came a day after defense lawyers said Hicks was weighing a possible plea deal that could get him out of the prison for "war on terror" detainees at the remote US naval base in southeast Cuba.

"This is the first step towards David (Hicks) returning to Australia," David McLeod, an Australian defense lawyer for Hicks, told reporters afterward.

A former horse trainer in the Australian outback who converted to Islam, Hicks had been portrayed by the prosecution as an aspiring holy warrior trained by Al-Qaeda and as a restless youth by his family.

The Hicks case has became a major political issue in Australia. Its conservative government, which had lobbied Washington to expedite the trial, welcomed the plea but complained that the legal process had taken too long.

"I'm pleased for everybody's sake that this saga has come to a conclusion," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

But he added: "My view was always that the legal process had just taken far too long."

Defense lawyers say the Australian government had pushed much harder on the case in the past year after coming under mounting criticism at home over the issue.

Downer said that Hicks would be back in Australia soon under a deal between the two governments.

"We have an arrangement with the Americans whereby he can serve any residue of his sentence in an Australian prison," he added.

Hicks was accused of training at an Al-Qaeda camp in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and allegedly volunteering to fight alongside Taliban forces during the US-led invasion in 2001.

He was the first detainee to be charged before the new tribunals, which were reconstituted under a controversial new law after a previous tribunal system was tossed out by the US Supreme Court last year. And Hicks is the first detainee at Guantanamo to be convicted by US authorities.

He pleaded guilty to the overall charge of supporting a terrorist organization but pleaded not guilty to a provision that alleged he had conspired to commit specific crimes, defense lawyers said.

Hicks entered the plea only hours after a visit with his sister and father, Terry Hicks, whom he had not seen since August 2004.

His father said earlier it was an emotional meeting with his son who he said looked "bloody terrible."

Hicks faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for the charge but prosecutors said they would not seek a life term.

Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the tribunals, said the five years Hicks has spent in Guantanamo as well as his guilty plea would be mitigating factors in determining his sentence.

And he denied there had been a plea deal, saying: "I wouldn't describe it as that, I would describe that the accused has elected to enter a plea of guilty to a specification of a charge."

The guilty plea from Hicks does not yet close the chapter on the case.

Under the tribunal rules, which resemble a US courts-martial, the defense and prosecution must reach agreement on the precise details of what Hicks has pleaded guilty to and the judge must ensure Hicks understands the facts of the charge.

A panel of military officers, the rough equivalent of a jury in a civilian court, will then determine his sentence, possibly by the end of the week.

Davis said the case showed the tribunals could operate in a fair manner.

But human rights groups said the guilty plea raised concerns that tribunals and the prison represented a "coercive" process, and that Hicks may have believed he could not receive a fair trial.
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So if he's transfered to Australia, can he appleal his conviction once there?

Gravemind123 · 27 Mar 2007

My guess is they just tortured a confession out of him. I hope that he can get a truly fair trial for his crimes, but since that isn't how the US deals with terrorists I doubt he will. On a side note, David Hicks is my dad's name, and he has been stopped at airport security for extra screening before, even while this guy was in Guantanamo. God I hate my country most days.

Cthippo · 27 Mar 2007

Gravemind123 said:

God I hate my country most days.
Click to expand...

Nice to see I'm not the only one

devenfore · 27 Mar 2007

I love the country.... I (strongly) don't agree with the way it is ran.

Constructacon · 27 Mar 2007

Cthippo said:

So if he's transfered to Australia, can he appleal his conviction once there?
Click to expand...

It's been strongly speculated that the guilty plea is only "a plea for release, for exit from the inhumane Guantanamo gulag" and not actually an admission of guilt.

When he does get back here I suspect he wouldn't be able to appeal here because the charges that he's being tried with don't exist in Australia. That's the reason the Australian government gave for why they didn't force the US to release him and bring him home for trial. It was kind of like:

General government attitude said:

"We can't bring him home and try him on a retroactive charge because that's not right. mumblemumble But we'll let the USA do it to our citizensmumblemumble"
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I'm glad it's an election year. It's the only reason anything is being done for this guy's human rights.

MystChic · 28 Mar 2007

I couldn't agree more, constructacon - I'll be honest, I'm surprised he's still alive.

Cthippo · 30 Mar 2007

Hicks' sentence to be limited to 7 years

Associated Press said:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The prison sentence of an Australian detainee who pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism would be limited to seven years under terms of a plea bargain, a military judge at Guantanamo Bay said Friday.

The judge, Marine Corps. Col. Ralph Kohlmann, revealed the terms of the agreement at a hearing Friday on whether to accept David Hicks' guilty plea. It was not immediately clear whether the maximum sentence accounts for the five years Hicks has already spent at Guantanamo Bay. Under an agreement between the U.S. and Australia, Hicks will serve any sentence in his own country.

Hicks, 31, was dressed for the hearing in a gray suit with a dark tie and with his hair newly cut short. The former outback cowboy and kangaroo skinner who aided al-Qaida during the U.S.-led invasion of
Afghanistan showed little emotion as he confirmed to the judge that he carried out surveillance work on the former American Embassy in Kabul.

Hicks said he believed the government could prove its case against him. Asked what evidence he had seen, he said: "Notes taken by interrogators from me." The judge listened to Hicks' testimony as he considered whether to accept the Australian's guilty plea, which he made Monday.

Hicks accepted responsibility for a list of activities that were revised slightly from the government's original charge sheet during negotiations over the plea agreement. The list dropped a reference to meeting "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid during his al-Qaida training in early 2001 as well as a description of his training as "advanced."

Hicks confirmed that he traveled to Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to attend terrorist training camps. After the attacks, under the alias "Abu Muslim Australia," he acknowledged arming himself to join al-Qaida and the Taliban in the fight against U.S. forces.
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Accounting for time served, he will probably come home and be released within a month. After all, the election is coming up and Howard would like this to all just go away. If somebody else (the judge for example) can be blamed for letting him out, so much the better.

Cthippo · 31 Mar 2007

Australian in Guantanamo to serve 9 months

Reuters said:

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Australian al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday but will only serve nine months, a U.S. military tribunal said.

Hicks, who became the first war crimes convict among the hundreds of foreign captives held for years at the Guantanamo prison camp, had pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism in an agreement with U.S. military prosecutors.

The deal allowed all but nine months of the sentence to be suspended, meaning he could be free by New Year's. Hicks will serve his sentence in Australia. The United States will send him home by May 29 after holding him for more than five years at the Guantanamo base in Cuba.

In Australia, Hicks' father said Saturday he was relieved his son would soon be home. "The bottom line of all this is that at least he's back home. He's out of that hell hole," Terry Hicks told local media.

The younger Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner from Adelaide, acknowledged that he trained with al Qaeda, fought U.S. allies in Afghanistan in late 2001 for two hours, and then sold his gun to raise cab fare and tried to flee by taxi to Pakistan.

Hicks, 31, denied having advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks. His attorney, Marine Maj. Michael Mori, portrayed him as a now-apologetic soldier wannabe who never shot at anyone and ran away when he got a taste of battle.

The prosecutor, Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail, said Hicks freely joined a band of killers who slaughtered innocents. "We are face to face with the enemy," Chenail said.

"NEVER BEEN ILLEGALLY TREATED"

Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 and was among the first prisoners the United States sent to Guantanamo a month later. Washington considers them dangerous and unlawful "enemy combatants" who must be detained in the war against terrorism.

Hicks had previously said he was abused by the U.S. military but said in his plea agreement that he has "never been illegally treated while in U.S. custody."

Hicks was the first person convicted in a U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War Two, and the only one charged in the tribunals created by the U.S. Congress after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier version that
President George W. Bush authorized to try foreign captives on terrorism charges.

A convert to Islam who later abandoned the faith, Hicks agreed to cooperate with U.S. and Australian intelligence services and testify in court against his former al Qaeda and Taliban colleagues.

Hicks' plea agreement bars him from speaking to the media for one year and requires him to give the Australian government any money received for the rights to his story.

Rights groups who monitored the trial said the deal seemed aimed at shielding the United States from scrutiny over its treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.

"If the United States had nothing to be ashamed of, it would not need to hide behind a gag order that would be illegal in our own courts," said Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

"IT'S GOOD"

At the sentencing hearing, Hicks wore a dark gray suit and tie and his hair was newly cut short. He did not speak except to answer "Yes, sir" or "It's good" as the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, asked him to affirm each act acknowledged in the plea deal.

Hicks admitted conducting surveillance of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul more than a decade after it closed, as a training exercise for one of four al Qaeda warfare courses he took in Afghanistan.

He acknowledged meeting bin Laden at one al Qaeda camp and asking him why there were no training manuals in English. Hicks also admitted guarding a Taliban tank at Kandahar airport for a week while "a fat al Qaeda leader" on a bicycle brought him food and updates about the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

"I think that David Hicks is very fortunate. He's getting a second chance," said the tribunals' chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Moe Davis.

Australian consular officials at the hearing declined to comment. But Lex Lasry, a senior barrister with the Law Council of Australia, said the tribunal process failed to meet international standards.

"I'm satisfied that David Hicks got a reasonable deal today so that's good for him. As to the rest of the process, the Law Council remains far from satisfied," Lasry said.
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OK, sorry to double post, but I thought the ending to this is interesting.

Constructacon · 1 Apr 2007

Double post was justified.

I'm not happy with the fact that time already served doesn't count. Especially concerning how his human rights concerning his trial were concerned. If they're only going to make him serve 9 months then suspend why shouldn't the 5 years count?

As for talking to the media - that's just insane. Fair enough to say you can't profit from crime (which is our law here - an he is now convicted) but to even say he can't talk to the media for free. What's to hide? I personally want to hear what this guy has to say once he's out from behind bars. It will also be interesting to see how his comments in his first interview will be edited.

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Hicks pleads guilty to terror charge after 5 years in Guantanamo

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Hicks pleads guilty to terror charge after 5 years in Guantanamo

Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

Gravemind123 avatar not found

Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

devenfore LANCandy

Constructacon Constructing since 1978

MystChic Geology Rocks!

Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

Cthippo Can't mod my way out of a paper bag

Constructacon Constructing since 1978

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