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SYDNEY, Australia — A lawyer for an Australian terror suspect detained at Guantanamo Bay expressed satisfaction Friday over a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down proposed military war crimes tribunals at the U.S. prison camp. "I'm obviously very pleased that the Supreme Court has finally set the record straight on these military commissions, that they don't provide the basic fundamental protections that are required at any criminal trial," said Maj. Michael Mori, the Pentagon-appointed lawyer for David Hicks, Australia's sole inmate at the U.S. military camp in Cuba.

AUSTRALIA'S Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks is no longer a Muslim. Hick was also publicly denounced by an al-Qaeda member at Guantanamo Bay for his lack of religious observance, a former British detainee has said. Rumours that Hicks had abandoned his Islamic beliefs were confirmed by British Muslim Moazzam Begg. Mr Begg shared a cell block with Hicks at the US military base in Cuba in 2004. Mr Begg, who was released in January last year after the British government intervened, wrote about his experiences in a new book, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back. Mr...

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend. How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up. As NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney put it, the arrest yesterday of 17 Muslim men disrupted "the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". He said explosive material had already been collected. Yet only last week, Prime Minister John Howard was pilloried by many for having warned of an...

A SYDNEY man allegedly telephoned the suspected leader of al-Qa'ida in Spain – Abu Dahdah – seeking help to move a "brother" and his family throughout Europe. The allegation about former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal – made in documents tendered in Mr Dahdah's terrorism trial – contradicts claims by him that he had never spoken to the alleged terror chief, or even knew who he was. As more details of a network of alleged terror supporters in Australia emerged yesterday, it has been claimed a second Australian named in the Spanish court documents, Melbourne cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran, was...

Australia's top investigators claim Mamdouh Habib trained as a terrorist before the September 11 attacks. Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib trained as a terrorist in Pakistan before moving to Afghanistan to serve as a mercenary with al-Qaeda, Australia's top policeman has told a parliamentary inquiry. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Mr Habib received firearms training in Pakistan in the days before September 11, 2001 to prepare him for a border crossing into Afghanistan to join Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation. Habib was arrested by Pakistani police inside Pakistan on October 5, 2001. "The investigators formed the view...

TERROR suspect David Hicks isn't confident his British citizenship will secure his release from detention at Guantanamo Bay, his father said today. The British Government said today it would appeal a British High Court ruling two weeks ago in which a judge ruled there was "no power in law" to deprive Adelaide-born Hicks of British citizenship. Hicks, whose mother is British, has been detained by the US since his capture among Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001. Britain's Home Office said today it would appeal the High Court ruling which granted British citizenship to Hicks, a 30-year-old Muslim convert...

Australian at Guantanamo wins court battle By PAISLEY DODDS ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER photo In this undated photo released by the Hicks family shows Guantanamo Bay detainee Australian David Hicks. Hicks held at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay won a court battle in London Tuesday Dec. 13, 2005, to be registered as a British citizen a step he hopes will secure his release. (AP Photo/Hicks family hand out) LONDON -- An Australian being held at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay won a court battle Tuesday to be registered as a British citizen - a step he hopes...

AUSTRALIAN terrorist suspect David Hicks, held in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has won his court battle for British citizenship, which could pave the way for his eventual release. The High Court handed down its decision in London. Hicks, 30, has spent four years at the jail after being arrested among Taliban forces in Afghanistan in the wake of the US-led invasion prompted by the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. His lawyers have said they will argue that as a Briton, Hicks should be freed, as has been the case with all other Guantanamo inmates...

The United States suspended its controversial military trials for 'war on terror' detainees after a ruling by a federal judge. Following the judge's action on Monday, the Defense Department said it had postponed the first trial hearing of accused "Australian Taliban" David Hicks, which was scheduled to start Friday at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. "The courts have intervened, as I understand it, and things are off for a period until the courts sort through things," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the government has not decided whether to appeal the ruling...

Hicks first to face US commission AUSTRALIAN terror suspect David Hicks will be the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried at a US military commission, with the Pentagon announcing today he will face a hearing on November 18. Hicks' first scheduled motions hearing would take place at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – where the Adelaide-born man has been detained since January 2002. The 30-year-old pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, conspiracy and aiding the enemy at a commission hearing in August last year. His father, Terry Hicks, said today his son would not...

IMPRISONED Australian terror suspect David Hicks will seek British nationality in a bid to secure his release from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Terry Hicks confirmed last night that his son's American and British legal teams were pursuing an application for British citizenship, as part of a new tactic they hope will end his 44 months in US custody. Britain has successfully secured the release of all its citizens held in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, with the final nine returned this year. The Blair Government argued there was a lack of legal protection for its prisoners and was critical of...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2005 – Proceedings will resume within the month at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the military commission trial of David Hicks, the so-called "Australian Taliban," Defense Department officials announced Sept. 20. An Australian citizen, Hicks allegedly trained in Kosovo and then traveled to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban government. He was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and has been held at Guantanamo Bay since early 2002. His was one of four war-crimes cases to begin the military commission process in August 2004. Proceedings in the four cases were halted in December, after a November ruling in...

TRUTH in the David Hicks affair remains as elusive as ever after fresh allegations this week from inside the US military that the Guantanamo Bay commissions are so seriously flawed that a fair trial is impossible. The most damaging blows yet to the commissions -- still supported by the Howard Government -- came from three US Air Force prosecutors involved in the trials who have quit the investigation in protest. One, John Carr, said the process appeared to have been rigged and that the first four cases -- including Hicks -- had been been "handpicked" and would not be acquitted....

ADELAIDE (AFP) - Suspected Australian terrorist David Hicks says he is on the brink of insanity, suffering severe mood swings and unable to comprehend reality because of his detention at Guantamao Bay, his father says. The Muslim convert captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan almost three years ago has told his father Terry Hicks in a letter that he fears he will be permanently scarred because of his detention by US authorities at the naval base in Cuba. Writing from what he says is a cramped room in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay's Camp Echo, the 29-year-old former chicken...

The US is coming under increasing pressure to abandon the military commission it has set up to try alleged terrorists, including Australian David Hicks. US officials privately acknowledge that the process is in turmoil and say substantial changes will be made to restore its credibility, Melbourne's The Age newspaper reports. The newspaper said some of the commission members were likely to be changed as an inadequate translation system improved. A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told the newspaper Australia had raised concerns with the US authorities and expected changes would be made to meet American assurances that the process would...

PAKISTANI-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is alleged to have trained Australian terror suspects David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, is extending its operational tentacles into Southeast Asia. A terrorism white paper released by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday examines the future of the terrorist threat to Australia. It says support for al-Qaeda regional offshoot Jemaah Islamiah is growing despite the arrest of more than 300 operatives in the wake of September 11 and the Bali bombing. Though Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in providing training to Southeast Asian-based terrorist groups such as JI and the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf in Pakistan and Kashmir, some...

(CBS/AP) The U.S. military announced Tuesday that it has formed a five-member tribunal to try three terrorism suspects held at this U.S. naval base. The trials — of an Australian, a Sudanese and a Yemeni — would be the first of any of the prisoners swept up in the U.S. war on terror and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Pentagon's announcement came a day after the Supreme Court issued a ruling that prisoners at the base should have access to U.S. civilian courts to appeal their detention — a decision considered a major blow for President Bush's stance that...

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CANBERRA: The first arrest made under Australia's new anti-terrorism laws, in fact the first Australian since 1978 to be charged with terrorism is a Pakistan-born medical student who allegedly attended a three-week training camp organised by the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan in January last year. Sydney resident Izhar Ul-Haque was arrested by the Australian Federal Police on April 15 and although he was released on bail on May 27, he is said to be under close observation. His lawyer has denied he was a terrorist but admitted that Ul-Haque was sympathetic to the “Kashmir cause''. Ul-Haque is said to have claimed...

The day Hicks met Osama bin Laden By PETER MITCHELL in Los Angeles 12jun04 THE case against Adelaide terror suspect David Hicks paints the former stockman as a renegade warrior. It says he bounced from terrorist groups in Albania and Pakistan, fighting in Kashmir, and then into the hands of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. According to case files, the convert to Islam was sounded out by a bin Laden associate on his willingness to carry out a suicide "martyr mission". He also allegedly met bin Laden and then translated al-Qaida training materials from Arabic to English after discussing the...