Australian Brass Attacks Terror Set-Up," by Jason Gregory - the Courier-Mail (Australia), 18 Sept 2005
An Australian Army brigadier claims the US and its allies are losing international support in the war on terror because of concerns about the way prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are treated.
Brigadier Gerard Fogarty, writing in the US Army quarterly magazine Parameters, said the US must scrap the controversial "second-class justice" military commission system to regain the moral high ground.
Australian David Hicks is one of the remaining detainees in the facility and his lawyers have consistently claimed he will not get a fair trial.
Brig. Fogarty, the army's director of workforce planning, suggested the US move trials of the Cuban detainees into the international arena by utilising United Nations-authorised tribunals.
"This adjustment would be viewed as ensuring a legitimate form of justice in the international community and would do much to reduce the anti-Americanism that is potentially undermining the coalition in the global war on terrorism," Brig. Fogarty wrote.
"Such action is needed not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it is in the long-term interests of the US and the world community.
"The outcomes of the commissions will not be viewed as legitimate in the eyes of a world already deeply sceptical of the detentions on Guantanamo.
"These critics present a strong argument that the US is, in fact, breaking the law...."
The Parameters article can be read on-line:
"Is Guantanamo Bay Undermining the Global War on Terror?" by Gerard P. Fogarty - Parameters, Autumn 2005, pp 54-71.
...The US strategy for winning the Global War on Terrorism is predicated on creating an international environment inhospitable to terrorists and all those who support them.91 There is a realization that in this war, the United States does not have the option of going it alone. President Bush has stated that the United States will “constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community in this fight against a common foe,” because success “will not come by always acting alone, but through a powerful coalition of nations maintaining a strong, united international front against terrorism.” A senior official in US Central Command, the regional combatant command responsible for prosecuting both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, has stated that America’s Achilles’ heel in these operations is coalition support. US Central Command sees shaping domestic opinion worldwide as essential to maintaining a strong coalition....
Added 21 Sept 2005 - for recent news on the David HIcks case, see:
"Defense Not Ready for Australian's Guantanamo Trial" - Reuters (Sydney), 21 Sept 2005
The defense of an Australian man held in Guantanamo Bay will not be ready on time, his lawyer said on Wednesday, after the Pentagon ordered the prisoner's long-delayed military trial to resume within a month.
David Hicks has been held for three-and-a-half years at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, but his case was put on hold last November after an unfavorable court ruling on the military commissions.
Pentagon officials said on Tuesday Hicks's case before the U.S. military commission would resume some time between October 3 and October 20.
But his Adelaide-based lawyer David McLeod said the time was too short.
"In no way is the defense ready to face up to the commission within 30 days," McLeod told Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) radio....
[Hicks'] lawyers want him brought home for a court trial instead of the U.S. military commission and McLeod accused the Pentagon of bowing to political pressure in ordering the resumption of the trial....
Human rights groups and military defense lawyers have criticized the commission rules, saying they favor prosecutors, allow evidence obtained through torture and hearsay and permit no independent judicial review.
The Australian government has consistently supported the military commission process and refused to seek Hicks's repatriation, saying it could not bring charges against him under tough anti-terror laws introduced after he was detained.
Added 26 Sept 2005:
"Australian Guantanamo Detainee Looks to Britain for Freedom" - AFP (Sydney), 26 Sept 2005
An Australian terror suspect held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay has applied for British citizenship in an attempt to win his freedom, lawyers and his father said.
The British government negotiated the release of all nine of its citizens held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, while the Australian government has refused to do the same for David Hicks who has been held for nearly four years....
Hicks's father Terry told national radio on Monday that his son made a passing comment about his mother's British citizenship when talking to his US lawyer Major Michael Mori about the recent Ashes cricket series between Australia and England during a recent meeting....
Press reports here said Mori lodged Hicks' formal request for British citizenship at the British embassy in Washington on September 16. They said that under legislation passed in 2002, children of British mothers are now eligible for citizenship...."
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