thejinx said:
If Saddam was allowed to be tried in his own country, then why can't David Hicks?
Why should he?
Saddam was tried in the country he committed the crimes.
Schapelle Corby and the Bali-9 have been tried in the country they committed their crimes.
Why should Hicks be treated any different?
Hicks should be tried in the country he committed the crimes he is accused of, under the laws of the new Afghani Government.
What this model citizen that people want to rush back to Australia is accused of:
* that in November 1999 Hicks travelled to Pakistan, where he joined the paramilitary Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Faithful).
* that Hicks trained for two months at a Lashkar-e-Toiba camp in Pakistan, where he received weapons training, and that during 2000 he served with a Lashkar-e-Toiba group near the Pakistan-Kashmir.
* that in January 2001 Hicks travelled to Afghanistan, then under the control of the Taliban regime, where he presented a letter of introduction from Lashkar-e-Toiba to Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda member, and was given the alias "Mohammed Dawood".
* that he was sent to al-Qaeda's al-Farouq training camp outside Kandahar, where he trained for eight weeks, receiving further weapons training as well as training with land mines and explosives.
* that he did a further seven-week course at al-Farouq, during which he studied marksmanship, ambush, camouflage and intelligence techniques.
* that at Osama bin Laden's request, Hicks translated some al-Qaeda training materials from Arabic into English.
* that in June 2001, on the instructions of Mohammed Atef, an al-Qaeda military commander, Hicks went to another training camp at Tarnak Farm, where he studied "urban tactics," including the use of assault and sniper rifles, rappelling, kidnapping and assassination techniques.
* that in August Hicks went to Kabul, where he studied information collection and intelligence, as well as Islamic theology including the doctrines of jihad and martyrdom as understood through al-Qaeda's fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
* that in September 2001 Hicks travelled to Pakistan and was there at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which he saw on television.
* that he returned to Afghanistan in anticipation of the attack by the United States and its allies on the Taliban regime, which was sheltering Osama bin Laden.
* that on returning to Kabul, Hicks was assigned by Mohammed Atef to the defence of Kandahar, and that he joined a group of mixed al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters at Kandahar airport, and that at the end of October, however, Hicks and his party travelled north to join in the fighting against the forces of the U.S. and its allies.
* that after arriving in Konduz on 9 November 2001, he joined a group which included John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban"). This group was engaged in combat against Coalition forces, and during this fighting he was captured by Coalition forces.
Both the US and Australian Governments have obviously thought that this person, with the amount of weapons training, contacts, and mental state...is still a danger to society.
For the Australian Government to risk losing 'political points' by keeping him imprisoned for this length of time, shows that US/Australian intelligence have a thorough idea of what trouble he could cause if released by a court (especially if he is tried under our legal system, which is SOFT at the best of times!), and do not want to risk him being let into the general community and to disappear back into helping fellow extremists.
If that is the case, then let him rot there for another 10 years!
I do not see any reason whatsoever that Hicks would be firstly captured, kept for this long, and still not tried....if he was innocent of these accusations.
RemoteTiger said:
No Liverpool it is time for you to get real - all those rhetorical questions you ask above are valid and should be answered - in a court of law.
The very reason our troops and the American troops are fighting in the middle east at the moment is to provide freedom and democracy to Iraq plus maintain our democracy which holds deep in it cradle the beliefs of Freedom, Justice and Liberty. What the US is doing to Hicks is making a mockery of the fundamental reason for which 3000 US (and 1 Australian) troops have given their lives for.
And if it were Iran or Syria or North Korea who had hold of Hicks for 5 years without a trial our Government would be making great noises about an Australian citizen being wrongfully imprisoned because no world justice system or process had been completed - and the invalid way our enemies treat their prisoners.
This smacks of Howard and Ruddick playing scare politics again - keep the voters scared and then you can tell them anything and they will believe it!
Hopefully the court of law you are speaking of does try him soon, and the sentence is carried out within 30 days.
Let me say this, and hopefully it will clear us any future misunderstandings.
As far as I'm concerned, this bloke is a traitor and a danger to society.
If he didn't get captured in Afghanistan when he did, what's to say he wouldn't be here training fellow "Australians" in similar tactics he has been taught?
I do agree that it would have been much better to try him sooner, however, let me say that if he doesn't get tried for another 10 years, my family and I won't be losing any sleep that this terrorist/mercenary is behind bars.
As for bringing him back here....what a joke.
We have had countless Australians commit crimes overseas, and do they get to come back to Australia to be tried?
No.
So why should Hicks be treated any differently?
Finally, I agree that the Coalition forces are in Iraq as fighters of freedom, justice, and liberty.
However, even after the Yanks went through Nazi Germany, they still held the Nuremberg Trials.
Hopefully Hicks also receives his trial, and maybe even a similar fate to the Nazis at Nuremberg.