David_Hicks
"David Matthew Hicks (born August 7, 1975), also referred to as
Abu Muslim al-Austraili and Mohammed Dawood while in Afghanistan,
is an Australian who was captured in Afghanistan and has been held
prisoner as an unlawful combatant by the United States Government
at Guantánamo Bay since his capture.
According to the U.S. government, Hicks served as a common foot soldier
with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
David Hicks was born in Adelaide, South Australia,
In 1999, Hicks traveled to Albania, where he joined the Kosovo Liberation Army,
fighting against Serbian forces in the Kosovo War.
On returning to Australia Hicks applied to join the Australian Army but was rejected.
Hicks then converted to Islam and began to study Arabic.
On 11 November 1999 Hicks traveled to Pakistan to study Islam.
After a period of time he began training with the Lashkar-e-Toiba
learning guerrilla warfare, weapons training, kidnapping techniques,
and assassination methods.
In a March 2000 letter, Hicks told his family "don't ask what's happened,
I can't be bothered explaining the outcome of these strange events has
put me in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in a training camp."
US military prosecutors have alleged Hicks "attended a number of
al-Qaeda training courses at various camps around Afghanistan,
including an advanced course on surveillance, in which he conducted
surveillance of the US and British embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan".
They claim that, on an occasion when al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden
visited an Afghan camp, Hicks questioned bin Laden about the lack
of English in training material and subsequently "began to translate
the training camp materials from Arabic to English". Hicks wrote home
that he'd met Osama bin Laden 20 times, later telling investigators
that he'd exaggerated. He'd seen bin Laden about eight times and
spoken to him only once.
He was captured by a "Northern Alliance warlord" on or about December 9, 2001,
near Kunduz, Afghanistan, and turned over to US Special Forces for
$1000 on December 17, 2001.
And if he gets extradited to India, he will be tried and hanged by the long-drop method.