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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS