Posted on 03/02/2007 1:42:34 AM PST by Aussie Dasher
UPPER House MP Bernie Finn has launched an attack on accused Australian terror suspect David Hicks, saying people were trying to turn him into a national living treasure.
"I must offer a word of caution to those seeking to elevate Hicks to national hero status," Mr Finn told State Parliament.
"David Hicks was not in Afghanistan to judge the Kabul beach babe contest.
"He was there fighting for one of the most oppressive regimes on earth, which is and was a supporter and promoter of terrorism both locally and internationally.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
The US press are determined to marginalize any sane criticism of Islamist terror. That would be bigotted, I guess.
Is David Hicks actually getting support in Australia? If so, why?
WE have lefties here, too.
Oh, I see. He's become a lefty cause. What a bunch of nitwits they are.
Total morons! Smelly, too...
I had to put up with a taxi driver listening to a radio station playing "Free David Hick". He looked like a Pakistani and he went into a tirad about Bush and how noone could be locked in a small cage for five years. I told him the Americans should free Hicks and turn him over to the the Indians. He didn't like that much.
LOL! Any chance of deporting the cab driver???
He's probably on the payroll of Terry Hicks --the activists are making big bucks out of this.
I've been itching to post the following two articles on Hicks, but wrongly, assumed no one in the US would be interested in 'our' little terrorist.
So, here goes:
Hicks was al-Qa'ida's golden boy: inmate
Patrick Walters, National security editor
February 24, 2007
DAVID Hicks was al-Qa'ida's "24-carat Golden Boy" and was willing to undertake suicide missions, including crashing a plane into a building, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate has claimed.
In a 148-page document written for US government terrorism investigators, British former inmate Feroz Abbasi wrote that Hicks wanted to "go back to Australia and rob and kill Jews".
Abbasi's account also made the claim that Hicks wanted to crash a plane into a building and details the Australian terror suspect's behaviour in al-Qai'da training camps in Afghanistan. The claims made by Abbasi, who was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2005 and has never been charged, are detailed in next week's Time magazine.
In a signed statement made on October 20, 2004, Abbasi - who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 after being caught carrying a hand grenade in his underpants - repudiated his written account of Hicks in its entirety, describing the allegations made against the Australian as "ludicrous in their content (yet believed by dense investigators)".
According to Time, Hicks was nicknamed "Golden Boy" because he was so clearly al-Qa'ida's favourite recruit. Abbasi wrote in his original statement that Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner and father of two who converted to Islam, wanted to "go out with that last big adrenalin rush".
"He once told me in Afghanistan that if he were to go into a building of Jews with an automatic weapon or as a suicide bomber he would have to say something like, 'there is no God but Allah' ect (sic) just so he could see the look of fear on their faces, before he takes them out," Abbasi wrote.
"I can only speculate as to why he likes capturing defenceless animals ... All these factors can only point to the reasons why he wanted to hijack a civilian plane and plough it into a civilian building."
Australian authorities have long maintained that Hicks received the highest level of terrorist training of any caucasian who attended al-Qa'ida training camps in Afghanistan.
Hicks, 31, from the northern Adelaide suburb of Salisbury, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and has since been held in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is yet to stand trial under the US military commission process.
US judge Susan Crawford will soon decide whether to recommend charges of attempted murder and providing support for terrorism. Hicks trained with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba in 2000 before heading for Afghanistan in January 2001 and attending a range of specialised guerilla training, according to US Defence Department files.
By his own account, Abbasi first met Hicks while jogging around the al-Farooq training camp near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
He claims the Australian was allowed to break rules while undergoing training and avoided routine punishments.
"We had to stand next to a shooter and catch his bullet shells as they were ejected from the rifle before they hit the ground. Golden Boy Hicks thought it was childish and stupid and absolutely refused."
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock declined to comment last night on the claims made by Abbasi.
Kevin Rudd said earlier this week that Hicks could not expect to get a fair trial under the US military commission process and that there was no presumption of innocence.
In his original account, Abbasi made no secret for his disdain for the Australian, calling him "that little runt David Matthew Hicks Al Qaedah's 24 ct Golden Boy".
According to Abbasi's chronicle, published in Time in Britain, the inmate suggested that Hicks had co-operated with US authorities at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay.
"As long as I do not dance to your tune like Golden Boy ... and tell you what you want to hear, you will always strive to condemn me. In fact, you have already done as much," Abbasi wrote.
And this one is my favourite! A trip to India is on the horizon for Hicks:
DAVID Hicks, already facing the possibility of 20 years' jail on terrorism charges in the US, is the subject of a new investigation by the Indian Government over his attacks on their armed forces in Kashmir.
The investigation has been triggered by disclosures in American prosecution files about the involvement of Hicks with a terrorist group that has killed thousands of people in the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.
The prosecution file states that the former kangaroo skinner and father of two who converted to Islam joined the terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan, travelled to the border with Indian Kashmir in 2000 and fired on Indian troops.
Reports of the American disclosures were sent to New Delhi this week by the Indian deputy high commissioner to Australia, Vinod Kumar.
Senior officials in New Delhi yesterday confirmed they were examining that material.
"We're looking into it and finding out the facts," an official in New Delhi told The Weekend Australian.
"If Mr Hicks was involved with them at any level, and if he was indeed firing weapons at our troops, then, most certainly, we'd like to talk to him about it.
"We'd be interested to talk to anyone who has done that. We don't take kindly to attacks on our soldiers -- even attacks by people like Mr Hicks."
The American file is consistent with a letter Hicks wrote to his family in Adelaide in which he admits to firing hundreds of bullets in Kashmir at the enemies of Islam.
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-occupied Kashmir in a training camp. Three months training. After which it is my decision whether to cross the line of control into Indian-occupied Kashmir."
The training camp was run by Lashkar-e-Toiba, the army of the pure, Islamic fundamentalists fighting to free Muslims under Indian rule and designated a terrorist group by Australia in 2003.
In another letter on August 10, 2000, Hicks wrote from Kashmir, claiming to have been a guest of Pakistan's army for two weeks at the front in the "controlled war" with India.
"I got to fire hundreds of bullets. Most Muslim countries impose hanging for civilians arming themselves for conflict. There are not many countries in the world where a tourist, according to his visa, can go to stay with the army and shoot across the border at its enemy, legally."
Australia has an extradition relationship with India as a fellow member of the Commonwealth that could allow the transfer of a suspect in special circumstances.
Hicks has been detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since being captured in Afghanistan in 2001 where he was fighting alongside Taliban forces.
US prosecutors last week announced Hicks will face a US Military Commission to answer new charges of attempted murder and providing material support to a terrorist organisation.
LET has waged a brutal insurgency aimed specifically at "destroying" India and "annihilating" Hinduism and Judaism, having proclaimed Hindus and Jews to be enemies of Islam.
It has over the years - including 2000 when Hicks was apparently in action with it - waged a war not just targeting Indian troops in Kashmir, but also rounding up Hindus and Sikhs in the disputed territory and massacring them.
LET militants in 2000 massacred 35 Sikhs in the village of Chittisinghpura.
Since hostilities broke out in earnest in Kashmir in 1989, an estimated 5000 Indian soldiers and paramilitaries have been killed. Estimates are, too, that 80,000-odd civilians have perished, and hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced from their homes.
John Howard yesterday expressed extreme frustration at the time the US is taking to bring Hicks to trial, vowing to press them "almost daily" over the matter.
The US last week began the process of charging Hicks. But US officials have admitted the final charges could be a month away - falling short of an Australian request that the issue be dealt with by the middle of February. And they have admitted a full trial could be as much as a year away.
The Prime Minister said he was reasonably satisfied that the process was now in train, but was concerned about how long it might be before Hicks actually goes to trial.
"Let me, without getting into the weeds of the technical jargon, let me simply say that it has gone on for so long now that we will be pressing the Americans almost on a daily basis," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
That's why I told the Taxi driver the Americans were going to release him to the Indians! I had saw that article too.
The left are outraged he'll be tried by a military commission who'll bake his ass - they were counting on him getting a civilian trial hopefully with a lefty Vermont style judge.
Chuckle...one day Hicks is gunna wish he was back in Gitmo. After the harrassment from Hicks' father, the civil-rights crowd, the loony left etc., our government will be delighted to oblige India and extradite him.
the Brits would love it! Compared to their 'holiday camps' Gitmo would be paradise, ditto the weather.
the real David Hicks with his rocket launcher and KLA buddies.
the excerpts in the article I posted are from letters to his father. His father made them public in the course of a documentary. The tribunal apparently will be able to admit a certain amount of 'heresay evidence' - David Hicks has admitted his own guilt and in his own words, should respect the sentence of hanging that would be handed down to him under islam. (Although I think he is deluded, they would disembowl him alive or behead him.)
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