Australian Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday he was unhappy that an Australian terror suspect remained in US custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba without charges.
But Howard said he was hopeful that David Hicks, an alleged Taliban fighter who was taken prisoner by the North Alliance in Afghanistan five years ago, would be charged by the Pentagon early next year.
Hicks, 31, had pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit war crimes and aiding the enemy and had faced a preliminary hearing before a US military commission.
But those charges were withdrawn when the US Supreme Court ruled the commissions were illegal in June. The US Congress has since passed laws to overhaul the military commission system.
On the eve of Hicks' fifth anniversary in custody, Howard said his defense and foreign ministers would raise the delay with their US counterparts when they attend annual bilateral ministerial talks in Washington next week.
"I'm not happy about it having taken so long and we are on a very regular basis pressing the Americans for a commitment that he be formally charged under the new military commission," Howard told Southern Cross Radio in Melbourne.
Howard said he pressed the issue with US President George W. Bush when they attended the APEC leaders forum in Vietnam last month and Attorney General Philip Ruddock raised Hicks again with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week.
"We are very hopeful that there will be formal charges brought against him early in the New Year," Howard said.
Howard's government is under mounting political pressure to demand Hicks' repatriation.
Howard argues that Hicks could not be charged in Australia because his alleged terrorist associations in Afghanistan did not breach Australian law of the time.
Hicks' Australian lawyers this week filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court calling on the government to press Washington for his release.
More than 200 judges, lawyers and their supporters gathered in Melbourne's court precinct yesterday to demonstrate against Hicks' detention.
"I don't think there's been a period since the 1950s and the McCarthyist era when we've seen such a sustained attack and disdain on fundamental notions of justice," lawyer and former state attorney general Jim Kennan told the protesters, referring to communist-hunting former US senator Joseph McCarthy.
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