THE head of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council has reiterated calls for the release of Australian David Hicks from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Council chairman, Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome, last week joined the increasing criticism of Australian Government efforts on behalf of 31-year-old Hicks.
US forces captured Hicks in Afghanistan in 2001 and charged him with providing “material support” for the international terrorist organisation al-Qa’ida.
Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he might have secured Hicks’ release any time during the last five years but did not because that “would not be fair” to US authorities.
Bishop Saunders called Hicks’ continued incarceration an “affront to human dignity and unacceptable to anybody who holds in high regard due processes of law and human rights in any real democracy”.
Held in solitary confinement, Hicks is now the subject of the retroactive Military Commission Act of 2006. As of February 12, no trial date had been set.
Hicks’ military counsel, Major Michael Mori, maintains the military commissions are fundamentally flawed, unfair and illegal.
CNS
