The Pentagon announced three criminal charges yesterday against David Hicks, an Australian held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accusing him of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. The move made Hicks, who was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001, the third captive at Guantanamo Bay -- and the first citizen of a U.S. ally imprisoned there -- to be charged with terrorism-related offenses. He will face trial under the controversial military tribunal process devised for some of those apprehended in government's war on terrorism.
According to the Pentagon charge sheet, Hicks, 28, a high school dropout and convert to Islam who has done stints as a cowboy, boxer, shark fisherman and kangaroo skinner, attended several al Qaeda training courses at camps in Afghanistan in 2001. Leaving the country briefly, he returned after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to fight alongside al Qaeda and Taliban members. Marine Maj. Michael Mori, a military lawyer representing Hicks, said his client has not committed any crime and would fight the charges. "What's not in the charges is almost more telling than what is," Mori said in a telephone interview. "There is no statement that David Hicks shot any service member or planted any bombs."
In outlining its case, the Pentagon said Hicks trained in Albania in 1999 with the Kosovo Liberation Army and fought for Albanian Muslims. He converted from Christianity to Islam and, in early 2000, joined an Islamic extremist group in Pakistan known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Righteous, participating in clashes with Indian forces in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. In January 2001, Hicks traveled to Afghanistan to attend al Qaeda terrorist training camps, where he took courses on weapons, urban tactics, guerrilla warfare and other military-related subjects, the Pentagon said. As part of a course on information gathering, Hicks conducted surveillance of various targets in Kabul, including "the U.S. and British embassies," according to the charge sheet. At that time, though, neither the United States nor Britain operated an embassy in the Afghan capital. A spokesman for the military tribunals said yesterday that the reference was to buildings once used as embassies and still occupied, when Hicks allegedly spied on them, by employees of the United States and Britain. |