KLA Terrorist On Trial in Guantanamo

Australian's odyssey leads to Guantanamo
Financial Times (London, England) - August 25, 2004 Wednesday

By PETER SPIEGEL

GUANTANAMO BAY - Like many young Austra-lians, David Hicks had travelled widely by the age of 25. According to the US government, he had already spent time in Albania, Pakistan and India.

But on his 26th birthday, in August 2001, his travels had brought him from Adelaide, South Australia, to Kabul, Afghanistan, where, the Pentagon alleges, he took part in an al-Qaeda training school to learn reconnaissance and surveillance of enemy buildings. Among his targets, according to military lawyers: the US and British embassies.

Four months later, following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington - events he allegedly watched on television from a friend's house in Pakistan - Mr Hicks was captured near Baghlan, Afghanistan, armed with an AK-47 and hand grenades, fighting against US forces.

Now 29, Mr Hicks took an unusual journey to the spartan US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Today, for the first time, he will face his captors in a judicial hearing at Guantanamo.

He will be only the second Guantanamo detainee to be brought before the Bush administration's military tribunals, following yesterday's proceedings for the driver of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader. But Mr Hicks has emerged as the most prominent of the 585 men being held on this arid corner of Cuba.

His unusual story has contributed to his notoriety. Although about a dozen detainees from outside the Middle East and south Asia are still known to be held in Guantanamo, few are such recent converts to Islam: according to charges filed against him, he became a Muslim only after fighting with the Kosovo Liberation Army in mid-1999. Mr Hicks also allegedly translated al-Qaeda's training manuals into English at Mr bin Laden's request.

But Mr Hicks has also become part of Australia's continuing political debate within Australia about whether John Howard, prime minister, has become too cosy with US President George W. Bush.

Unlike Mr Bush's other close ally in the war on terror, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, Mr Howard has made little effort to repatriate captive Australians, arguing that Mr Hicks had not violated any laws at home and would therefore be released.

Mr Hicks's court reunion today with his parents, who have arrived from Adelaide, is expected to be the emotional highlight of the four days of hearings in Guantanamo this week.

Their son's trip to Guantanamo was far more circuitous, according to the Pentagon. The young Mr Hicks's stint with the KLA was followed by about a year fighting for the Army of the Righteous, an anti-Indian Kashmiri terrorist group. The group provided him "funding and a letter of introduction" to join an al-Qaeda training camp in January 2001, the US alleges.

Mr Hicks now faces the most serious charges of all the first four defendants: conspiracy to commit war crimes, aiding the enemy, and attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent. After nearly three years at Guantanamo, his legal fate is not expected to be decided for months.

London Edition 3 - SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS; Pg. 5