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Ex-Guantanamo detainee Hicks should be cleared: lawyer

By Dwyer Arce

[JURIST] The former defense lawyer for Australian ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks [JURIST news archives] said Sunday that his former client should be cleared of all links to terrorism because he never committed a crime. The lawyer, Steve Kenny, said he has been unable [AAP report] to find a law that Hicks had broken, either under Australian, Afghan or international law, and was actually prosecuted for a crime that did not exist at the time of his trial. Hicks pleaded guilty [JURIST report] to one charge of providing material support for terrorism at his US military commission [JURIST news archive] in 2007. The statements come as Hicks is preparing to mount a legal challenge to his conviction, in which he plans to appeal [The Age report] to US President Barack Obama [official profile] for a pardon. Hicks's lawyers have cited statements by Obama and the reform of the military commission system after his conviction to support their case. In a letter [text] to The Canberra Times [media website] on Monday, the watchdog Australia Defence Association (ADA) [advocacy website] disputed Kenny's statements, arguing:

Hicks' 2001-06 detention was as a belligerent captured in war, not for a crime. This was and remains lawful under the Geneva Conventions - as was confirmed by the US Supreme Court in the June 2006 Hamdan ruling - and is not disputed by any serious international lawyer. ... [W]hether Hicks' later separate criminal trial, conviction and sentence by US Military Commission was justified in international law or not remains understandably controversial. But it does not change the factual and moral situations that if Hicks was to commit the same acts today as he has freely admitted doing in 2000-01 he would commit an offence against Australian law. Even ignoring Hicks' own admissions and boasts about voluntarily joining terrorist training camps, in moral terms [Hicks should] never have his name cleared of any terrorism links.

It is believed that Hicks is seeking to overturn his conviction so that he can publish a book about his experience in Guantanamo. He is currently unable to do so because of laws that disallow convicts from profiting from their crimes.

In December 2008, Australian authorities removed the final restrictions [JURIST report] against Hicks, who served more than five years in the military prison before pleading guilty to providing material support to al Qaeda [GlobalSecurity backgrounder]. He had been under control order [JURIST report] since his release in 2007 after serving a nine-month sentence. The Australian government's surveillance of Hicks included weekly meetings with police, a strict curfew and restrictions on his ability to travel and communicate. He was released in December 2007 after being transferred to Australia [JURIST reports] in May of that year to serve the remainder of his sentence at a maximum security prison near his hometown of Adelaide, South Australia.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on July 19, 2010 (boomark / email).