David Hicks, the former Australian Muslim convert held for years in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay prison, will try to clear his name through an appeal against his conviction for providing material support for terrorism. The crime did not exist at the time of his arrest and did not come into force until five years later. The legal team representing Hicks also alleges he was tortured.
Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by Northern Alliance troops and sold to United States forces for $1000. He was held for more than six years at Gitmo before being returned to Australia, where was treated as a pariah by former Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal government and called a "traitor" in the media.
Unlike Britain and the governments of other nationals held in the prison, Australia made no efforts to free Hicks or demand an early trial, accepting the US position without question. Howard said, "He knowingly joined the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I don't have any sympathy for any Australian who's done that."
Hicks, who renounced Islam at Gitmo, is now challenging his conviction in the US Court of Military Commission after a Court of Appeals ruling last year that the charge could not be applied retrospectively. His lawyers also said in court documents that Hicks' guilty plea had been forced by his extended detention, torture and abuse.
The documents said, "Over the course of more than five years, Mr Hicks was repeatedly beaten, sexually assaulted, threatened with deadly violence, injected with unknown substances and subjected to an entire arsenal of psychological gambits ... that had as their aim the destruction of his personality. He was stripped naked, deprived of sleep for extended periods, cast into solitary confinement, contorted into shapes that no human body should be forced to assume, and told that he would never again set foot on his native soil."
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