Australians show support for terrorist suspect

[Universe Prince]

A few excerpts from an article headlined "Growing Calls in Australia for Terror Suspect’s Return" by Raymond Bonner:

SYDNEY, Australia, Saturday, March 3 — The decision by the United States military to charge an Australian citizen, David Hicks, with one terrorism-related offense comes as Prime Minister John Howard is under mounting pressure, even from conservatives in his own party, to have Mr. Hicks charged, tried and brought home. Mr. Hicks is the first detainee from the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be charged under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But the single charge, of providing “material support for terrorism,” after Mr. Hicks has been held for five years in Guantánamo, has been met with skepticism, disbelief and some anger here, from conservatives and liberals alike.

[...]

The relatively minor, single charge after such a long detention “means they’ve botched it,” said Barnaby Joyce, a federal senator for Australia’s conservative National Party, which is part of the governing coalition. “They’ve completely abused the process of justice.”

[...]

Mr. Hicks’s lawyers are in any case certain to challenge the charge on the grounds that there was no such crime when Mr. Hicks was training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. The United States Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, but in light of recent laws passed by Congress and various court rulings, it is not certain that Mr. Hicks will be afforded that protection.

[...]

The groundswell of support for Mr. Hicks here does not arise because Australians believe that he is innocent, but rather because many here believe he has been denied justice by having been held so long without a regular trial. “He may well be a rat bag, but even rat bags deserve their day in court,” is how Senator Joyce put it. “It is about due process of law, the principles we are fighting for in Iraq,” he added in an interview. “In fighting the barbarians, we are starting to imitate the barbarians.”

[...]

The combined public relations strategy has recently gained traction. For nearly five years, the opposition center-left Labor Party stayed far away from the Hicks case, as did the Australian news media. In the first nine months of 2006, there were 63 mentions of David Hicks in The Australian, according to the paper’s researchers; in the last five months, there have been 255. The list of public leaders calling for David Hicks to be given an expeditious and fair trial has grown steadily longer and includes those from the Labor Party. In January the director of military prosecutions in the Australian Army, Brig. Gen. Lyn McDade, called Mr. Hicks’s detention “abominable.” “I don’t care what he’s done or alleged to have done,” General McDade, a former prosecutor, told The Sydney Morning Herald. “I think he’s entitled to a trial, and a fair one.”

Whole article at the other end of this link.

I agree with the Australian senator and general on this one.

[BT]

He should be set free.

And if he can't afford explosives, the government should provide them to him.