Al-Qaeda-trained Australian David Hicks appeals against terror conviction
An Australian who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and ended up a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay has filed an appeal to overturn his terrorism conviction by a military court.
An Australian who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and ended up a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay has filed an appeal to overturn his terrorism conviction by a military court.
David Hicks was the first Guantanamo prisoner to be convicted of war crimes, pleading guilty in March 2007 to providing material support for terrorism. The plea deal got him out of the US base in Cuba, with most of his seven-year sentence suspended, and he was freed by the end of that year.
His lawyers on Tuesday filed an appeal on his behalf, arguing that a ruling in another Guantanamo case that struck down the charge of providing material support for terrorism should now be applied to Hicks. They say his plea deal was an involuntary act of desperation after more than five years in custody.
"He literally had no choice under those circumstances," said Wells Dixon, a lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights group that has battled the US government over Guantanamo since shortly after the prison opened in January 2002. "It was either plead guilty or follow through with his plan to commit suicide."
Hicks said in Australia yesterday that the appeal was intended to help him get on with his life. "It is important, for myself and for my family and those who have supported me and had faith in me over the years. It will help with closure and moving forward."
The appeal by Hicks is the latest fallout from an October 2012 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the case of Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden. The court ruled that material support for terrorism did not meet the criteria of a war crime that could be prosecuted by the military commission under the 2006 legislation that set up the special tribunal at Guantanamo.
The ruling has cast doubt on three other military commission convictions, and has limited the number of Guantanamo prisoners who can be prosecuted.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale, said a crucial difference between the Hamdan and Hicks cases is that the Australian pleaded guilty. "As part of that agreement he waived any appellate review of his conviction in exchange for a reduced sentence that he could serve in Australia and today he is free," Breasseale said.
Hicks, a former horse trainer, admitted attending a paramilitary camp in Afghanistan that the US said was run by al-Qaeda, and joining the Taliban, but says he never fired a weapon or fought against the US or its allies.
