CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Illegal U.S. Military Trials Begin in Guantánamo

CUBA, March 27, 2007.- Illegal U.S. military trials have begun in Guantánamo -- located in southeastern Cuba and occupied by the United States. A prisoner at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, Australian David Hicks, has pleaded guilty at a military court to a charge of providing material support for terrorism. The 31-year-old Muslim convert was accused of attending al-Qaeda training camps and fighting with the Taleban.

The plea means that Hicks, who has been at the camp for five years, will likely return home to serve his sentence. Hicks is the first detainee at the detention camp to face so-called terror charges under new U.S. rules. He was charged under the new Military Commissions Act, which human rights groups around the world condemn as illegal.

According to the BBC, Hicks appeared at the hearing wearing khaki prison fatigues and with hair down to his chest -- grown, his lawyer said, to pull over his eyes at night to keep out the light and allow him to sleep.

As the proceedings got under way, Hicks was formally charged and initially deferred entering a plea. But later on his lawyers told the judge he was pleading guilty. Other charges against him, including attempted murder, have been dropped.

The BBC says that U.S. and Australian authorities have already agreed that Hicks will serve out his sentence in his native country. He faces a maximum sentence of life but after strong pressure from the Australian government, there is speculation that he will receive a shorter sentence.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told local media that he welcomed the conclusion to a legal process that he said took "far too long."

Before the hearing, which was opened to members of the press, Hicks was allowed a two-hour reunion with his father and sister. He last saw his father, Terry Hicks, at a previous hearing in August 2004.

David Hicks arrived in Guantánamo Bay in early 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan a month earlier. The former farm hand and kangaroo skinner was charged and started a trial process previously in August 2004. However, the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled the system unconstitutional.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush then put together a new military tribunal system that was pushed through the U.S. Congress.

Hicks is the first person to be tried under the new procedures. Two others, Omar Khadr, a Canadian, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from Yemen, have been indicted but have not yet been read sworn charges. The U.S. has said it plans to use the new system to prosecute about 80 of the remaining 385-or-so prisoners at the camp.

The human rights organization Amnesty International has condemned the tribunals as "shabby show trials" and demanded that detainees be tried under the regular U.S. judicial system.

David Hicks' lawyers and human rights monitors observing the hearings say the trials are rigged to ensure convictions and allow the information obtained through coercion and torture.(Cubaminrex-RHC)

 

 

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