In a little more than a week, a new grass-roots political movement here has gathered more than 7,000 names of supporters on its Web site in a campaign to free David Hicks, an Australian citizen being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The organization, GetUp, was founded in August by two young Australians. They collected the names for a letter to the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, demanding that he take action to have Hicks, 30, brought back to Australia to stand trial.
Hicks was taken prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2001 and sent to Guantanamo. In June last year, American prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy.
Australian officials have said repeatedly that he has not violated any Australian laws, so bringing him back would likely be tantamount to giving him his freedom.
"We're blown away," Lachlan Harris, a spokesman for GetUp, said about the response to the campaign.
A spokesman for Downer dismissed the campaign. "It's another group attacking the Howard government," Chris Kenny said, referring to Prime Minister John Howard. "What's new?"
GetUp describes itself as a progressive organization -- its founders say they were inspired by the left-leaning US advocacy group MoveOn.org, -- but its campaign coincides with a growing discomfort among Australians across the political spectrum over the lengthy detention of Hicks and the fact that US officials plan to try him in a secret military tribunal rather than in open court. In closed-door meetings of Howard's center-right Liberal Party, increasing numbers of party members are expressing concern.
In a break from the normal practice of not speaking on political issues, the chief justice of the Supreme Court for New South Wales, who is a Labor government appointee, this week offered a glancing criticism of US procedures.
"Military justice bears the same relationship to justice as military music does to music," Jim Spigelman told the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Bush administration has assured the Australian government that it has a strong case against Hicks, several Australian officials said. But many other Australian officials, most of whom asked not to be identified, say they are skeptical.
The Australian Federal Police conducted the most extensive investigation into Hicks' activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sending investigators there. One senior law enforcement official said the case against him was "very weak."
Another senior Australian official, from a different agency, said that while there is little doubt that Hicks trained with al-Qaeda, the US did not appear to have any witnesses who could testify to it.
After being expelled from school at 14, Hicks drifted, skinning kangaroos in the outback, training horses in Japan and going to the Balkans to fight Serbian ethnic cleansing with the Kosovo Liberation Army, they said.
He went to an evangelical Christian church before trying Islam and heading to Pakistan. He fought in Kashmir with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamic army backed by Pakistani's intelligence services, then went to Afghanistan.
Australian intelligence said that after being rejected for al-Qaeda training, Hicks returned to Pakistan, spent more time in a religious school, then applied again and was accepted.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not