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Recent Appearances... Rantburg
David Hicks David Hicks Taliban Afghanistan/South Asia Australian Captured Cannon Fodder 20030113  
    captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001
  David Hicks Taliban Terror Networks Australian Captured Cannon Fodder 20050611  
    Interned at Guantanamo
  David Hicks Lashkar e Taiba Down Under Australian 20040611 Link
  David Hicks Kosovo Liberation Army Down Under Australian 20040611 Link
  David Hicks al-Qaeda International Australian Captured Cannon Fodder 20050724  
    Scheduled to face a military tribunal; entered guilty plea. Transferred to Australian custody on conviction. Released 12-2007.

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
US-trained Afghan pilots and other personnel boarded a US-brokered flight out of Tajikistan
2021-11-10
[TWITTER]


“It's a relief,” said David Hicks, a retired US brigadier general who is helping lead a charity called Operation Sacred Promise working to evacuate and resettle Afghan air force personnel.

The Afghan personnel in Tajikistan represented the last major group of US-trained pilots who fled abroad and were still known to be in limbo.

The group of evacuees included a US-trained Afghan pilot at an advanced stage of pregnancy, who had expressed fear for her unborn baby in an interview with.

The group flew to Tajikistan in military aircraft at the end of the war, was detained by Tajik authorities and had been awaiting a US relocation - hoping the transfer to the Middle East will lead to eventual US resettlement.

Rooters detailed accounts from the pregnant pilot and other members of the group about their frustrations with their detention, and was first to report US plans to relocate them.

The Pentagon estimated that the expected group of evacuees totaled about 191 - larger than the more than 150 Afghans previously known to be at two sites in Tajikistan. It did not explain the figures.

Afghan air force personnel flew dozens of military aircraft to Tajikistan and to Uzbekistan in August as the Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
 swept to power.

In September, a US-brokered deal allowed a larger group of Afghan pilots and other military personnel to be flown out of Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.

Even before the Taliban's takeover, the US-trained, English-speaking pilots had become prime targets of the Taliban because of the damage they inflicted during the war. The Taliban tracked down the pilots and assassinated them off-base.

Afghanistan's new rulers have said they will invite former military personnel to join the revamped security forces and that they will come to no harm. But pilots who spoke with Rooters say they believe they will be killed if they return to Afghanistan.
Related:
David Hicks: 2015-02-19 Court Nixes Guantanamo Conviction of Australian Ex-Detainee
David Hicks: 2014-10-22 Fool Fowle released by NK & returned to USA by USAF
David Hicks: 2013-11-08 Aussie ex-Gitmo prisoner seeks to clear his name
Link


Home Front: WoT
Court Nixes Guantanamo Conviction of Australian Ex-Detainee
2015-02-19
[ABCNEWS.GO] An appeals court on Wednesday struck down the terrorism conviction of Australian David Hicks, reversing one of the few successful prosecutions of a prisoner before a U.S. military court at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.

The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review vacated Hicks' March 2007 guilty plea, the first conviction of a prisoner at the base in Cuba and still one of only a handful.

"We had been waiting for this decision for years," Hicks said at a news conference in Sydney. "It's a relief because it's over."
Link


China-Japan-Koreas
Fool Fowle released by NK & returned to USA by USAF
2014-10-22
Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans being held in North Korea, was abruptly allowed to leave today on a U.S. government jet.

Fowle, 56, of Miamisburg, Ohio, had been awaiting trial on charges of leaving a Bible at a nightclub in the northern port city of Chongjin last May. Proseletyzing [sic] is illegal in North Korea...

The site of a USAF plane with an American flag on its tail at Pyongyang's international airport was an unusual sight.

While in a North Korean jail he was fired from his job as an equipment operator for the city of Moraine, Ohio, a job he had for the last 26 years. The dismissal last month came with a $70,000 severance package.

At some point, you have to return to work,” Moraine City Manager David Hicks told ABC News.

Hicks noted that Fowle was a union employee. “Although he was terminated, he has the ability to apply at any point in the next year and he would be immediately reinstated into his position,” he said.

The city's termination letter to Fowle said that he was being dismissed "in light of your continued incarceration in North Korea resulting from (a) unilateral decision to travel to North Korea against the advice of your family and acquaintances; and (b) running afoul of North Korean restrictions on ‘anti-government’ activities."

Hicks said that the city kept his wife and children on Fowle’s health insurance after his termination.
An utter maroon or really poor intel op gone bad. What other choices are there? At least his family and acquaintances seemed to have a lick of sense, unlike the "victim". After having a huge amount of US funds spent to return him home, he can most likely look forward to a nice city taxpayer-funded pension.
This morning the Dayton Daily News reported Fowle has arrived at Wright Patterson AFB and met with his wife and children. Fowle's wife Tatiana is a native of Russia.
Link


Down Under
Aussie ex-Gitmo prisoner seeks to clear his name
2013-11-08
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."
Link


Home Front: WoT
Boston bomber's wife hires terrorism lawyer
2013-05-09
The widow of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has hired a lawyer with experience defending terrorism cases.

Katherine Russell-Tsarnaev, who continues to face questions from the US authorities, added Joshua Dratel to her legal team, her lawyer Amato DeLuca said. Dratel's "unique, specialised experience" will help ensure that Russell-Tsarnaev "can assist in the ongoing investigation in the most constructive way possible", said DeLuca.

Dratel has represented a number of terrorism suspects in US federal courts and military commissions, including Guantánamo Bay detainee David Hicks, who attended an al-Qaida-linked training camp in Afghanistan.

DeLuca, who specialises in civil cases such as personal injury law, said Russell-Tsarnaev will continue to meet investigators as "part of a series of meetings over many hours where she has answered questions".

An FBI spokeswoman would not comment when asked on Wednesday whether Russell-Tsarnaev is co-operating with the authorities. DeLuca has said his client had no reason to suspect her husband and his brother in the bombing.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Gitmo Jury Recommends 14 Years For Al Qaeda Cook
2010-08-12
A Guantanamo jury recommended a 14-year sentence Wednesday for an al Qaeda cook, though its decision may be overruled by a plea bargain that will limit the time he spends in prison.

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan pleaded guilty last month to supporting terrorism, making him only the fourth Guantanamo detainee to be convicted since the prison, which has held nearly 800 men, was opened in 2002.

The jury of 10 U.S. military officers was not told about the sentence limit in the plea agreement. If it is less than 14 years, the jury's sentence will only be applied if al-Qosi does something to break the deal, said Navy Capt. David Iglesias, a spokesman for military prosecutors.

Military officials say al-Qosi's actual sentence will not be revealed publicly until it is reviewed by a Pentagon official known as the tribunals' convening authority, a process that could take several weeks.

It is not yet clear where he might be held. Judge Nancy Paul, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, said Wednesday that officials would have 60 days after sentencing to determine that.

She told jurors they could sentence al-Qosi to between 12 and 15 years in prison — a range that is reportedly well above the terms of the plea bargain. She said the detainee would not receive credit for the eight years and seven months he already has spent in confinement.

Iglesias said the recommended sentencing range was determined in discussions between attorneys for al-Qosi and the convening authority, retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, a former Navy judge advocate general with broad powers over the system for prosecuting terror suspects.

As part of the plea agreement, the 50-year-old detainee signed a statement declaring that he followed Osama bin Laden after the al Qaeda leader's expulsion from Sudan in 1996 and continued working for him in Afghanistan.

Al-Qosi said he learned after they occurred that al Qaeda was behind the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998 and the 9/11 attack on the U.S., but he was not involved in their planning.

He was arrested in Pakistan after fleeing the al Qaeda hideout at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, during the U.S.-led invasion. He was among the first prisoners taken to Guantanamo.

The only witness for the prosecution at Wednesday's sentencing hearing, al Qaeda expert Robert McFadden, testified that only the most loyal followers of bin Laden would be allowed close enough to become a cook or driver.

"Trust is the major factor," said McFadden, an agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

In a closing prosecution statement to jurors, Marine Capt. Seamus Quinn said it is the support of people like al-Qosi that make al Qaeda possible.

"It would be an insult to Mr. al-Qosi and to our intelligence to think he was nothing more than running bin Laden's kitchen," said Quinn, who urged the panel to impose a 15-year sentence.

Defense attorneys presented videotapes of interviews with al-Qosi's relatives. The man's father, Ahmed al-Qosi, said his son socialized with Christians as a youth at an Italian school and said that "our spirits would be much happier" if he is returned to Sudan.

A defense lawyer, Army Maj. Todd Pierce, said that upon repatriation al-Qosi would enter a rehabilitation program run by Sudan's intelligence service that assigns extremists to moderate mosques and employs informants to track their behavior. He said the program is 85 percent effective and none of the nine men sent back to Sudan from Guantanamo have engaged in hostilities against the United States.

Al-Qosi's lawyers said he was little more than a menial worker to al Qaeda's senior leadership.

"Do you think they pulled off these horrible attacks by blabbing about it to their cooks?" defense attorney Paul Reichler said.

Al-Qosi avoided a possible life sentence at trial by pleading guilty July 7 to one count each of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy.

The Arabic-language news channel al Arabiya, citing two unidentified sources, reported recently that the secret agreement calls for al-Qosi to serve an additional two years at most and return to Sudan afterward.

Prosecutors have pledged to let al-Qosi serve any sentence in a communal-living section of the Guantanamo prison reserved for the most cooperative detainees. That condition sparked an internal dispute because military policy calls for convicts to be held apart from other inmates.

For now there is only one convict at Guantanamo, al Qaeda media chief Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who was sentenced in 2008 to life in prison.

Paul, the judge, said she was troubled that authorities had not developed written guidelines for the handling of convicted detainees even though another trial is under way for Omar Khadr, a young Canadian accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan in 2002. Opening arguments are expected in that case Thursday.

The military trials established by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attack also yielded convictions of bin Laden driver Salim Hamdan and Australian David Hicks. Both have already served their sentences and returned home.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 struck down one version of the military trials, known as commissions, before Congress and the Bush administration came up with new trial rules.

Obama revised them further to extend more legal protections to detainees, but human rights groups say the system is still unfair and prosecutions should be held in U.S. civilian courts instead.
Link


Down Under
Terror's new breeding ground
2010-02-28
Late last year, under the watchful eye of Australia's security services, Sydney man "Abdullah" boarded a plane out of Mascot airport, bound for the Middle East. An associate of the nine-man cell that was recently convicted of preparing for a terrorist act in Sydney, the man had been under close surveillance for several years. But on this occasion, it was his destination that set red lights flashing in counter-terrorism circles. He was travelling to Yemen, now regarded among CT professionals as "the new Afghanistan" for al-Qa'ida, and a magnet for Australian and other Western supporters of the global jihadist cause.

Abdullah was one of at least 20 Australians known to have travelled to Yemen in recent years, whose movements are being monitored by ASIO and counter-terrorism police. The group includes several people with links to the convicted terrorists who were sentenced last Monday in Sydney to up to 28 years in jail. Their activities illustrate a key point of the federal government's white paper on counter-terrorism released last week: that successes against al-Qa'ida and its affiliates in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been offset by the rise of militancy elsewhere, most notably in Yemen and neighbouring Somalia. And Australia is directly at risk as a result.

Australia's ambassador for counter-terrorism Bill Paterson reinforced the point at a national security conference in Sydney on Thursday, saying Yemen and North Africa have become "new safe havens" for global jihadists. "Yemen especially is at risk of becoming a magnet for radicalised individuals from elsewhere to join together to train and perhaps take the step from radicalism to violent extremism, and then to project back into other parts of the globe," Paterson says.

Equally worrying for the authorities are contacts between certain suspected radicals in Australia and the newly notorious American-born Yemeni-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. To the concern of Australian authorities, counter-terrorism agencies have monitored a stream of communications between Awlaki's group in Yemen and a small circle of followers in Australia. The contacts include mobile phone and email messages. Videotaped copies of Awlaki's sermons, in which he espouses the cause of violent jihad, have also been circulated among this group. "His teachings are of great concern to us," Detective Superintendent John O'Reilly, Commander of the NSW Police Counter-Terrorism and Special Tactics Operations Group, tells The Australian.

The activities of Abdullah, who has not returned to Australia since his recent trip to Yemen, illustrate why Australian authorities are so concerned. Abdullah had only recently had his passport returned by ASIO, after it was confiscated when he was judged "likely to support or participate in acts of politically motivated violence". ASIO's interest in him dates back to 2000 when, after doing the haj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, he continued to Pakistan with a group of friends from Sydney who went on to train with the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, which had not at that stage been banned in Australia. When interviewed later by the Australian Federal Police, Abdullah denied undergoing training. However former Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks told the AFP that he and Abdullah trained in the same camp at the same time.

Abdullah was interviewed by ASIO seven times between 2000 and 2004, and several more times after that date. His home was raided in 2002 and again in 2005. The agency's interest was piqued by the fact he was working at the Indo-Malay halal butchery in Lakemba in Sydney's southwest, which was run by an Indonesian-Australian identified as the deputy leader of the Australian branch of the Indonesian militant group, Jemaah Islamiah. The butchery, which was under surveillance and had its phones tapped, was also a contact point for the French terrorist Willie Brigitte in 2003.

Abdullah was investigated again during Operation Pendennis, which resulted in the arrests and convictions of the nine-man Sydney terror cell, the last of whom were sentenced last week. Evidence produced by the crown revealed that Abdullah had been involved in the purchase of laboratory equipment with one of the cell members. He claimed it was for use in his perfume business. However, judge Anthony Whealy said in his sentencing remarks that the equipment "was plainly to be used for the purposes of the conspiracy". The police were keen to charge Abdullah but the evidence against him was deemed to be weaker than that against the nine men who were ultimately charged.

Abdullah had first planned to move to Yemen with his wife and eight children in 2004, but his passport was confiscated by ASIO on the eve of his departure. He told ASIO his visa to Yemen had been arranged by a friend from Sydney, a Polish-born Australian, Marek Samulski, who was already living in Yemen. Samulski was arrested in the Yemeni capital Sanaa in October 2006, and accused by Yemeni police of being part of an al-Qa'ida ring that was funnelling weapons to the Islamist insurgency in neighbouring Somalia.

Two other Australians, who had long been of keen interest to security agencies, were also detained in the Sanaa raid. They were two brothers, Mustafa and Ilyas bin Ayub, the sons of one-time Australian JI leader, Abdul Rahim Ayub, and his former wife, Sydney woman Rabiah Hutchinson. The brothers had travelled to Yemen to undertake Islamic studies and lived in the same apartment block as Samulski. The Yemeni Interior Ministry claimed initially that the three Australians had confessed to involvement in al-Qa'ida weapons smuggling. But the Ayub brothers were released without charge after seven weeks, when their Yemeni lawyer announced that the allegations against them had been found to be false. Samulski was detained for longer while his file was referred to terrorism prosecutors for possible charges. But he too was ultimately released without charge. He has not returned to Australia since.
Link


Down Under
Australian former Guantanamo Bay detainee freed
2008-12-21
SYDNEY, Australia – Authorities on Sunday lifted the last remaining restrictions on an Australian man who spent more than five years as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay and admitted assisting the al-Qaida terrorist network. David Hicks, a 33-year-old ex-kangaroo skinner and Outback cowboy, was held in U.S. custody at the military detention center in Cuba before striking a plea deal that returned him home to Australia to serve a nine-month sentence.

Hicks was released a year ago after completing the sentence for providing support for terrorism, but was placed under a strict court order that required him to report to police three days a week, observe a curfew and banned him from using any telephone or Internet account not approved by police. The order expired at midnight Saturday. Australian Federal Police, which had sought the original order citing national security reasons, said last month it had decided not to ask a court to renew the restrictions.
Decided that he was just a washed-up punk ...
Hicks has kept a low profile since being released from prison. He is living in his home city of Adelaide, and has said through lawyers and recorded statements that he is struggling to return to a normal life after suffering trauma at Guantanamo Bay.

Hicks was captured by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in late 2001 and handed to U.S. troops invading the country to unseat the Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Hicks spent 5 œ years in captivity without trial at Guantanamo Bay before pleading guilty to supporting terrorism at a U.S. military tribunal in a plea bargain. Hicks admitted providing material support to al-Qaida in exchange for serving a sentence in Australia.

Throughout his ordeal, Hicks’ family and lawyers insisted he was an immature young man who was caught up in events beyond his control after the Sept. 11 attacks. They said Hicks converted to Islam and sought adventure as a fighter in Kosovo and Kashmir after the Australian army rejected him because of a lack of education.
Link


India-Pakistan
Mumbai Terror Group Trained American Jihadists
2008-12-10
A growing chorus of intelligence officials in the U.S. and in south Asia have pinned the Mumbai attacks on the Kashmir-based militants Lashkar-e-Taiba. But there's been hardly any mention of the extremist group's deep ties to American-based jihadists.

Since 2003, at least five U.S. citizens have been convicted in federal court of conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba. At least nine more men, considered to be in the same larger circle, have been convicted of firearms violations and other felonies. (A partial list is here.) Several other cases are still making their way through the legal process.

Islamic extremists in America have used Lashkar-e-Taiba ("LeT") as a "stepping stone" into the broader world of global terror, says Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator at the NEFA Foundation. With easy-to-access training facilities, English-speaking recruiters, and connections to militants around the world, a Lashkar camp is "the best way for emerging jihadist to get trained."

In April, 2000, for instance, Virginia native Randall Todd Royer (pictured) went to a LeT camp in Kashmir. The place wasn't hard to find, according to an opinion from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. Online newsletters gave out the group's phone number and e-mail address, with the assurance that "requests for information about the jihad in Kashmir are welcome." A recruiting center operated openly in Lahore, one of Pakistan's largest cities.

Royer spent a month at the LeT camp, firing AK-47s and other weapons, and going through endurance training. In August, Seifullah Chapman made a similar trip, arranged by Royer, who called it a "straight path" to global jihad. There, Chapman spent thirty days in "weapons training" and "performing military drills."

Then, on September 16, 2001, Royer and several of his would-be militant friends gathered to decide what to do in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When the meeting broke, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, Yong Ki Kwon, Muhammed Aatique, and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan had all "agreed to go to LeT for training," according to Judge Brinkema. "Each of them had the intent to receive training that would allow him to proceed to Afghanistan and fight on behalf of the Taliban and Mullah Omar against United States troops."

Days later, all four were in the LeT office in Lahore, where they saw posters of a boot trampling the American flag, and the U.S. Capitol in flames. They traveled on to a Lashkar camp, where they fired AK-47s, anti-aircraft guns, and rocket-propelled grenades.

None of them made it to the Afghan fight. But in December 2001, two of the men, Khan and Kwon, were asked "to return to the United States, gather information, and spread propaganda." A year later, Khan was purchasing drone aircraft parts, and gave them to a LeT operative.

Nobody in this Virginia-based circle was about to be confused with Osama Bin Laden. These were newbies with violent intentions, not master terrorists. But Lashkar served as a kind of filter for the broader jihad movement -- sorting out who should stay wannabe, and who should go to the next level. One of the people who was moved up was Australian David Hicks. The group trained him, and then provided him "with a letter of introduction to Al Qaeda in 2000," the L.A. Times notes. Hicks went on to fight for the Taliban regime. "He was released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last year after pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism."

American investigators continue to find domestic links to the Kashmir-based group. In 2007, Mahmud Faruq Brent was convicted of providing material support to LeT, after he admitted to attending one of their training camps. Federal prosecutors in Atlanta are still trying Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee for aiding LeT. They trained the Kashmiri group's camps, and then tried to get other Americans to do the same -- two more strands in Lashkar's network of ties to the United States.

"If you're hard-core about global jihad, you eventually outgrow what Lashkar has to offer -- unless you want to fight India, of course," Kohlmann says. But the group is "still being used by individuals around the world to start their jihad training."
Link


Home Front: WoT
US charges Foopie with Africa bombings
2008-04-01
The Pentagon announced Monday war crimes charges carrying the death penalty against a Tanzanian inmate held in Guantanamo Bay arising from Al-Qaeda attacks on US embassies in East Africa a decade ago.

The Defense Department said Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani would face a special military tribunal on nine counts including murder related to the August 1998 bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 11 people and injured hundreds. Military prosecutors said that after the twin bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, which altogether killed more than 200, Ghailani worked as a bodyguard for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and forged documents and trained recruits. "Six of the nine charges carry the maximum penalty of death," Brigadier General Thomas Hartman, legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, told reporters.

Hartman said the military commission trials gave full protection to defendants, including the right to view evidence, to call witnesses and to pursue appeals against any conviction all the way up to the US Supreme Court. The legal rights "are specifically designed to ensure that every accused receives a fair trial consistent with American standards of justice," he said, adding that a unanimous jury of 12 is needed to deliver the death penalty.

But the Pentagon's announcement sparked an predictable outcry from rights campaigners, who insisted the legal front of the US "war on terror" enacted at the naval base on Cuba was a travesty of justice. "These commissions aren't fit to try anybody, still less to condemn anybody to death," Amnesty International USA lawyer Jumana Musa told AFP, noting that Ghailani still faced a federal court indictment issued in 1998.

In October 2001, just after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, four Al-Qaeda extremists were sentenced to life without parole by the Manhattan court for their part in the African embassy bombings. "There's absolutely no reason why Ghailani's trial shouldn't proceed there instead of in a military commission," Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch said. "It's a particular concern that he could be sentenced to death under a system that allows, in certain circumstances, the use of evidence obtained through highly abusive interrogations, and lacks established rules and procedures," she said.

Ghailani was arrested in Pakistan in July 2004 after a shootout with police, and transferred to US custody about five months later. He had been on the FBI's most-wanted list and had a five million dollar bounty on his head. When he was arrested, Ghailani was drawing up plans for a missile strike on an airliner at Nairobi airport in Kenya as well for attacks on London's Heathrow Airport and US financial institutions, Pakistani officials said.

Ghailani's capture was hailed as the biggest coup in the hunt for Al-Qaeda since Pakistan arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003. Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks of 2001, was slapped with capital charges in February along with five other Guantanamo detainees. The CIA has acknowledged that waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning widely denounced as torture, was used nearly five years ago in interrogations of Mohammed. Military prosecutors accused Ghailani of playing an instrumental role in the Dar es Salaam bombing, including buying explosives and detonators, and moving the bomb components to various safe houses around Tanzania's biggest city. They alleged that he scouted the US embassy with the suicide bomb driver, met with conspirators in Nairobi shortly before the bombing, and joined them on a flight to Pakistan a day prior to the attack.

A total of 15 Guantanamo detainees have now been charged under the Military Commissions Act, which was hurriedly passed by Congress in 2006 to answer Supreme Court objections to the previous system of military justice created to try "war on terror" suspects. Only one case has been concluded through the controversial Guantanamo trial system. "Aussie Taliban" David Hicks reached a plea deal with prosecutors and completed his sentence on home soil when he returned to Australia in May.
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Down Under
Hicks Leaves Prison
2007-12-30
David Hicks, the only person sentenced by the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists, walked out of prison in Australia on Saturday morning after serving nine months for providing support to a terrorist organization.

Mr. Hicks, an Australian, had been detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for more than five years before his appearance before the military commission in March. In a plea bargain he acknowledged that prosecutors had evidence to prove he had been a trainee for Al Qaeda who was prepared to fight Americans.

The deal allowed him to serve the remainder of his sentence in Australia. He also agreed not to speak to the news media for one year. In a statement read by his lawyer, David McCleod, Mr. Hicks said that he would honor the gag order. Mr. Hicks also thanked the politicians and organizations that had supported him. “I will not let you down,” the statement said.
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Down Under
Hicks to be sprung Saturday
2007-12-29
David Hicks, the first Guantánamo Bay prisoner convicted of terrorism charges, will walk free from an Australian prison tomorrow after more than six years in captivity. The 32-year-old former kangaroo skinner will apologise to the Australian people for the inconvenience he has caused when he leaves the maximum security Yatala prison in Adelaide, his father said.

However, Terry Hicks insisted that his son had been pressured into admitting terrorism charges in a plea bargain which saw him sent home from Guantánamo in May. "There'll be some sort of apology," Terry Hicks said. "It is important to him that he gets this message across and thanks everybody who has been supportive of him."

He added: "Nothing's really been proved, nothing's been in a proper court system, all that's happened is that David signed a piece of paper to get out of the place."

US officials portrayed Hicks, who was captured while guarding a Talitank alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001, as a committed al-Qaida supporter who had met Osama bin Laden a number of times. His lawyers countered that the Muslim convert, who has since renounced the faith, was an immature adventurer who only went to Afghanistan after his application to enlist in the Australian army was turned down.
Immature young lad. On a grand adventure. With a gang of blood-thirsty jihadis. And a rifle of his own.
Hicks spent more than five years at the US detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, where his family say he became depressed and withdrawn.
No kidding; being in a U.S. military slammer would sure depress me.
He became the first person convicted at a US war-crimes trial since World War II after he pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida. Under the plea bargain, Hicks was allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence in Adelaide, but in return forfeited any right to appeal his conviction and agreed not to speak to the media for a year from his sentencing date.
He admitted his guilt. Case closed. Next!
Australia's government has concedes that the gagging order may not be enforceable in Hicks' home country, where he has not been convicted of any crime. On release, Hicks will be subject to a form of control order obliging him to report to police three times a week and obey a curfew, among other restrictions.

Hicks' long incarceration without trial prompted human rights campaigners to condemn the country's then prime minister, John Howard, for not pushing the US for his release. The new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who defeated Howard in a November election, was a strong critic of Hicks' treatment and the military tribunal system that convicted him.

However, Rudd has not challenged the plea deal and said today that Hicks would have to accept the control order. "Mr Hicks should be treated no differently to any other Australian citizen in these circumstances and our expectations of Mr Hicks is that he would comply with the requirements which have been imposed upon him," he told reporters.
Mr. Rudd does not seem to be a complete ninny...
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