Lawyers and the family of the first Guantanamo Bay inmate likely to face a US military tribunal for alleged terrorism said yesterday charges were being fabricated and applied retroactively to the man's case.
David Hicks, an Australian allegedly fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan when he was captured in late 2001, was charged by the Pentagon on Thursday with providing material support for terrorism, more than five years after he was jailed at Guantanamo Bay.
Hicks was not charged with attempted murder, as had earlier been recommended by military prosecutors.
Major Michael Mori, Hicks' Pentagon-appointed lawyer, said the decision to drop the attempted murder charge indicated a lack of evidence against his client, and that the charge against him was unfair because it did not exist at the time of Hicks' capture.
"The United States administration -- this military commission -- is fabricating offenses, they're trying to apply them retroactively to David," Mori told Australian Broadcasting.
"It's disgusting that he has spent five years in Guantanamo for made-up charges," Mori said.
US prosecutors argue the offense did exist at the time of Hicks' capture, though not as a military crime.
The argument over the charge underscores a broader debate about the legality of the military tribunal system.
Hicks' father, Terry Hicks, said the military commission would "not be a fair process" because hearsay evidence and statements made under coercion would be accepted.
Mori said the Australian government, which yesterday expressed confidence in the military tribunal system, should recognize the process was unfair.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has refused to ask Washington to repatriate Hicks.
The Pentagon alleges that for about a year starting around December 2000, Hicks provided "support or resources to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, an act of terrorism" and that he "knew or intended" for the support to be used for terrorism.
Hicks is the first of some 385 Guantanamo inmates to be charged since the US Supreme Court knocked down previous charges against Guantanamo detainees.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema