The Australian government yesterday denied that it had forged a secret deal with US Vice President Dick Cheney to secure the release of Guantanamo Bay terror detainee David Hicks.
The so-called "Australian Taliban" was freed from US military custody in May after a surprise deal under which he pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism and was allowed to complete a nine-month sentence in Australia.
The latest edition of Harper's Magazine reported that Cheney directly intervened to get Hicks a plea bargain deal after meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
"He did it, apparently, as part of a deal cut with Howard," the magazine quoted an unnamed officer involved in the Guantanamo military commissions as saying. "I kept thinking: this is the sort of thing that used to go on behind the Iron Curtain, not in America. And then it struck me how much this entire process had disintegrated into a political charade."
Reacting to the report, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Howard had made it clear to Cheney at a meeting in February that Hicks' case had dragged on for too long and he wanted a trial as soon as possible.
But the government played no role in negotiating the plea bargain, Downer told reporters.
"The plea bargain wasn't negotiated by -- the fact of a plea bargain was something we certainly promoted -- but the plea bargain itself was a matter between the prosecution and the defense," Downer said. "The defense accepted the plea bargain, the prosecution accepted the plea bargain and David Hicks went to jail in Australia as a result."
Hicks spent more than five years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after being captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, following the US-led invasion prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The father-of-two admitted training with al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan but his detention without charge threatened to become a serious political problem for Howard, who faces an election next month.
Hicks' father, Terry Hicks, said he was not surprised by the reports that Cheney and Howard had struck a deal following their meeting in Australia.
"The possibility is yes, that may have been part of it," he said. "To me, it looks like it may have been. I've said all along this is probably very political, it fits the Howard government agenda."
Hicks, 31, is due to be released in late December, five weeks after the Australian election.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of