Military to try Cuba detainee:Australian linked to bin Laden group

[Judi Lynn]

Military to try Cuba detainee
Australian linked to bin Laden group

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Newspapers. Los Angeles Times; Tribune news services contributed
Published June 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- In the first major terrorism case designated for a military tribunal, the Pentagon on Thursday announced it had charged an Australian who allegedly became a convert to Islam and a soldier for terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

The decision to try David Hicks, 28, a prisoner at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was reached after lengthy negotiations between the United States and Australia that produced a U.S. agreement not to seek the death penalty.

Hicks is charged with three criminal counts--conspiring to commit acts of terrorism, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. But unlike two other detainees at Guantanamo Bay who face military tribunals, the government portrayed Hicks as a committed and well-traveled terrorist who trained alongside bin Laden and shouldered an AK-47 rifle and a grenade pack for Al Qaeda and the Taliban army in their war against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Hicks was captured in November 2001 on the Afghan battlefield along with John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban recruit from northern California, six weeks after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
(snip/...)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0406110183jun11,1,5918889.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
(Free registration required)