 Paul Maley and Geoff Elliott | January 03, 2009
A TOP US general has warned of the risks of taking terror suspects from the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison as the Rudd Government yesterday admitted it was considering the move after a second request from the Bush administration.
Major General John Altenburg, formerly an appointing authority to the US Military Commissions - the body that oversees the prosecution of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay - told The Weekend Australian that a significant number of former detainees had subsequently undertaken terrorist acts or had been recaptured on the battlefield.
His warning came as Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard revealed Australia had rejected a request early last year from George W. Bush and was "examining (a) second request" made last month to "assist with relocation" of a small group of the remaining 250 inmates.
Having earlier told The Australian that any request would be considered on a "case by case basis", Ms Gillard yesterday said it was "unlikely" the Rudd Government would agree to the latest Bush request.
"Notwithstanding that it is unlikely Australia would accept these detainees, given the fact that the Bush administration has formally approached Australia with this request, the request demands proper consideration," she said.
However, Ms Gillard yesterday noted the request had been made by the Bush administration - in December after the US election - and not from incoming president Barack Obama, who is committed to shutting down the island prison.
Her tempering remarks came after Malcolm Turnbull declared it would be "completely unacceptable" to accept former detainees as migrants. The Australian revealed yesterday that the Rudd Government, and Gordon Brown's Government in Britain, were considering requests from the US to resettle detainees as part of a plan to close Guantanamo Bay.
General Altenburg yesterday said there was a significant degree of reoffending among the detainees who had been released from the Cuban prison.
"About 30 of them have been captured or killed or are known to be back on the battlefield," he said. "These are people who were released because they thought they weren't dangerous. To me, it's a fair comment to say, 'we don't want these people. Now we've got the burden of watching them and we don't know whether they're dangerous or not'."
Mr Turnbull demanded the Government detail any negotiations about the plans for Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
"Mr Rudd must rule that out and if he is not prepared to rule it out he must tell us exactly what plans he has for dealing with these inmates in our community," the Opposition Leader said.
The Rudd Government has promised that any detainees allowed into Australia would be "rigorously" vetted.
According to a report issued by the US military last June, a total of 37 detainees are known or suspected to have re-engaged in terrorist activities or been killed or captured on the battlefield following their release.
One man, Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, conducted a suicide attack that killed seven people in Mosul, Iraq, in April last year.
The Kuwaiti national had been released from Guantanamo Bay in 2005.
Another detainee, Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar, was alleged to have become the Taliban's regional commander in Afghanistan's Helmand and Oruzgan provinces - where Australian troops operate - after being held at Guantanamo Bay for eight months in 2002.
Ghaffar was later killed by Afghan security forces while planning an attack against the Afghan police, the US alleges.
About 7 per cent of those transferred from US custody have engaged in, or are suspect to have engaged in, terrorist activity, US officials allege.
Generally, detainees transferred to Afghanistan or Pakistan re-engaged in local fighting, often against coalition forces, the report says.
Of those Guantanamo Bay recidivists transferred to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, most reconnected with transnational terrorist networks, such as al-Qa'ida.
General Altenburg said there appeared to be some confusion in the public about Mr Obama's pledge to shut Guantanamo Bay's prison facility and the shutting-down of the system of Military Commissions used to try terror suspects, including Australian David Hicks.
He said the incoming administration had yet to make a decision on the future of the commissions, which General Altenburg said remained the best method of trying detainees.
He said trying high-value detainees such as alleged Bali bomber Hambali in US civilian courts could easily result in acquittals - not because the defendants were innocent, but because the evidence against them had not been managed in ways required by civilian courts.
According to a study on the remaining detainee population by US think tank Brookings, there are 248 detainees in Gitmo from more than 30 countries.
More than 70 per cent of the detainees are citizens of Middle Eastern and North African nations, including 94 Yemenis, the study said. Guantanamo also houses 20 Saudis, 10 Algerians, 10 Tunisians, nine Syrians, eight Libyans, six Kuwaitis, six Iraqis, three Palestinians, three Egyptians, two Moroccans and one detainee each from the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.
Detainees from the region immediately surrounding the South Asian theatre of war include 27 Afghans, four Pakistanis, four Uzbeks and one Tajik.
The remainder of the population includes a far-flung collection of 17 ethnic Uighurs of Chinese citizenship. Source: The Australian
Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent | December 26, 2008
AUSTRALIA has been asked to accept detainees released from Guantanamo Bay when it is shut, plans for which are already under way.
The US State Department confirmed that, over the past 12 months, it had cabled more than 100 countries seeking help to clear out Guantanamo Bay.
The incoming administration of Barack Obama is expecting help with resettling more than 250 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay, some still considered dangerous but many regarded as not being a threat.
Labor has been critical of Guantanamo Bay, saying the post-9/11 detainee camp was "an affront to natural justice and the rule of law". The Rudd Government itself, however, has not pushed the issue too hard since taking office, unlike some of its European counterparts.
Resettlement of detainees could be a hard sell politically for the Rudd Government, but taking a lead role would curry plenty of favour with the incoming Obama administration. Spokesmen for the departments of foreign affairs and immigration declined to comment on whether Australia would be prepared to take Guantanamo detainees.
Already several European powers, looking to turn a new leaf with Washington, are making significant overtures to the incoming Obama administration, saying they are willing to help with resettling detainees. Some 60 of them have already been cleared for release by US authorities but cannot return to their homeland for fear of persecution.
The Bush administration has been making moves to shut Guantanamo Bay for more than a year but found few countries willing to help.
It's unpopularity - and given that many consider Guantanamo Bay a problem of the White House's own making - left the administration with few avenues for international co-operation.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday that reports Europe might accept inmates were encouraging and marked "a new attitude" from allies, who rejected similar requests by President George W.Bush.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates, whom president-elect Barack Obama has tapped to continue in the role, this week ordered aides to draw up plans for closing Guantanamo Bay.
Mr Obama has said the facility's closure is a priority and he wants it shut within two years of his taking office on January 20.
Mr Gates wanted to be ready in case Mr Obama decided to take action on Guantanamo Bay soon after assuming office, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
"He has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down, what will be required specifically to close it and move the detainees from that facility and at the same time protect the American people from dangerous terrorists," hesaid.
The prison opened in 2002 as a way of holding detainees caught in the war on terror beyond the reach of US courts, where civilian evidentiary rules for detention would apply.
While some detainees have played a central role in al-Qa'ida, such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, others have been held for years without charge and without presenting any discernible threat to the US or the West.
Australia's David Hicks was held for five years in Guantanamo before being convicted last year of providing material support for terrorism. He was returned to Australia to serve nine months in an Adelaide jail before being released and placed under a control order, which expired last weekend.
Another Australian detainee, Mamdouh Habib, was released without charge in 2005.
Germany and Portugal have acknowledged they were considering taking detainees, while others have flatly refused.
The Netherlands yesterday ruled out accepting any newly freed inmates.
"If they are not to be tried but cannot return to their own countries, it is first and foremost the responsibility of the country which arrested and imprisoned them, the United States," a Dutch foreign ministry spokesman said.
"The Netherlands will not take in Guantanamo inmates."
Britain has taken back nine detainees who are British nationals and four British residents, and said on Wednesday it would consider any more US requests on a case-by-case basis.
A broad definition in the US of "material support" for terrorism has made it problematic to resettle detainees in the US, creating a legal and political headache for anyone else willing to consider accepting detainees.
The Obama administration is expected to redefine some of the legalities soon after taking office to overcome the hurdles. Source: The Australian
 Verity Edwards | December 24, 2008
ALOYSIA Brooks, the University of Sydney student who stole David Hicks's heart, looks set to become his wife.
The couple have spoken about marriage to a Sydney pastor, who yesterday told The Australian the former Guantanamo Bay detainee had been waiting for court-imposed restrictions to be lifted so the two could honeymoon freely.
Ms Brooks, who flew to Adelaide with Hicks on Monday to spend Christmas with his family, has been wearing what appears to be an engagement ring.
Graham Long, a pastor at the Wayside Chapel, a Uniting Church mission in Sydney's Kings Cross, said he had spoken to Hicks about marriage but not about setting a date.
"Now that the control order has gone away it's a different deal," Mr Long said. "They're much more optimistic than they were a couple of weeks ago."
Mr Long said Hicks had told him he did not want security agents or undercover police covering his honeymoon.
Hicks is now able to travel interstate and overseas without permission from the Australian Federal Police.
Mr Long has been visiting Hicks regularly since the confessed terrorism supporter moved to Sydney to access rehabilitation services six months ago.
He said Hicks did not attend services at the Wayside Chapel.
However, Mr Long said he had provided a supporting role to Hicks and had regularly dined with him and Ms Brooks.
Hicks's father, Terry, said he was unaware his son was considering tying the knot. The couple might be planning to surprise him for Christmas, he said.
Ms Brooks, who is a postgraduate student at the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and writes poetry on human rights issues, met Hicks in Sydney earlier this year.
The couple had kept their relationship under wraps until they were photographed together by The Australian at Adelaide airport on Monday. Source: The Australian Aloysia Brooks
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
 Verity Edwards | December 23, 2008
SHE is the new woman in the changing life of former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks. And Aloysia Brooks, a postgraduate student, is fiercely outspoken in defence of her man.
After flying in from Sydney with Hicks to spend his first Christmas in nine years at home with his family in Adelaide, Ms Brooks yesterday took The Australian aside to plead to "give him space".
Hicks was no longer a "confessed terrorism supporter", she said, despite the former kangaroo skinner's guilty plea before a US military commission last year.
"You don't know what went on there; you don't know under what conditions he signed (the confession)," Ms Brooks said.
Hicks should instead be referred to as a free man after the expiry of a court-imposed control order last Saturday.
Freeing Hicks after more than seven years in custody, including five years at the US military's controversial prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, was what brought the couple together.
Ms Brooks writes poetry on human rights issues and was this year enrolled at the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. A Sydney woman with her distinctive first name leapt to Hicks's defence on a newspaper website in 2006.
"David Hicks is someone's brother, son and father," Aloysia wrote. "He gets scared, bleeds and feels pain just like you or I ... He is someone who deserves to be treated with dignity, respect and compassion no matter what he has done."
Ms Brooks also signed a petition last year calling for justice for Mohamed Haneef.
The romance blossomed after Hicks moved from his home town of Adelaide to Sydney six months ago, where he found it easier to access rehabilitation services and settle back into the community.
The couple, photographed together for the first time by The Australian yesterday, kept their relationship under wraps until now.
Hicks remained tightlipped when he flew into Adelaide to be met at the airport by his father, Terry, his staunchest defender through his imprisonment.
Standing by her fit-looking and tanned boyfriend, Ms Brooks hung back as Hicks shook hands with his father. When approached by The Australian, Hicks said: "No comment, but merry Christmas."
Once a practising Muslim, Hicks carried a wrapped Christmas gift off the plane. He renounced Islam while in Guantanamo Bay, according to his supporters. Terry Hicks said he was pleased to have his son and new partner home for the family's first Christmas together this decade.
"It's very special, but we're going to try to keep it as normal as we can - he's just part of the family," Mr Hicks said. "It's just lunch and a get-together, the same as everybody else. We're not going out of our way to make a big hype; it's just a normal get together."
A sign of Ms Brooks's acceptance in the family was her presence at a meeting yesterday between Hicks, his father and their Adelaide-based lawyer, David McLeod. Although freed of court restrictions on his movements and communications, Hicks is yet to comply with requests by the Australian Federal Police to interview him. Source: The Australian
December 21, 2008
FORMER Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks will fully focus on his rehabilitation program after his control order expired at midnight, his father said.
The convicted terrorism supporter has been living under a strict control order since his release from South Australia's Yatala jail last December.
Hicks' father Terry Hicks said his son was looking forward to his full freedom without having to report to police or abide by other control conditions, such as curfews or restrictions on his movements.
"At the moment, once it's all over, he's going to fully focus on his rehabilitation - it's what he wants to do," Mr Hicks said.
"What's been happening is he's been going to rehab, making good progress with the mental and physical things, then having to report to the police station so the rehab's been going out the window and he regresses in his treatment."
Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 and in January the following year was transferred to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
On March 31 last year, under a plea bargain, he was sentenced to seven years' jail, but ordered to serve only nine months with the rest of his sentence suspended.
He returned to Australia in May last year and served out his remaining time in Yatala.
In a video released last month by lobby group GetUp!, Hicks promised to one day tell his story about "the hell that was Guantanamo Bay". Source: The Australian
 Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 08:18pm
The involvement of Britons among the terrorists responsible for the murders of more than 150 people in Mumbai last week signals another milestone in the march of multiculturalism and the failure of Western and democratised nations to deal with Islamists.
In the mosques of London, leaders like Anjem Choudary, right-hand man to the hate-filled cleric Omar Bakri, were praising the killers, saying any Britons or Americans among the dead were targeted legitimately because they should not have gone to India.
“Muslims are being killed in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan every day through acts of atrocity against them.
But the media only report events like Mumbai,’’ he told The Daily Mail as Indian police revealed that at least two terrorists they had captured were British-born Pakistanis.
In the UK, as in many European nations and in Australia, governments have permitted Muslim migrants to create their own enclaves and ghettos and preach their own interpretations of their religion, unhindered by the cultures of their host nations and often in contempt of the laws of the society of their host country.
Aided by the powerful civil rights lobbies and squadrons of lawyers, Islamists are waging a successful war to prevent further assimilation of Muslims into Western society, forcing women to wear traditional Islamic garb to emphasise their separateness, urging the introduction of Islamic sharia law into local courts.
From the shores of Somalia to the cells of Guantanamo, the West is in confused retreat, its politicians too concerned about appearing to be in breach of international civil rights covenants than they are about the safety of their citizens.
India, with its 150-million strong Muslim population - the largest outside Indonesia - is no different.
Though the vast majority of its Muslims are peaceable and law abiding, it has not been able to develop a coherent policy to deal with the terrorists, despite continuing attacks in which more than 4000 people have been murdered in the past four years.
Lying between two backward, Islamic-loving nations, Pakistan and Bangladesh, India is a forward-looking country with a vibrant economy that is seeking to take advantage of its assets, its large English-speaking population, its legacy of British laws.
The Indian Islamic community is isolated within the greater population, its members attuned to the cults of victimhood and hate which spew from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, across the Gulf from Mumbai.
Fearful, perhaps, of an Islamic uprising supported by the jihadist groups allowed shelter by Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Indian government has moved to appease, rather than challenge, Islamist supporters.
It was the first nation to ban Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, in 1988, though the Nobel prize-winning author was born in Mumbai; and, 11 years later, it released three terrorists, in exchange for an aircraft hijacked by Taliban supporters and taken to Afghanistan.
One of those freed was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a former London School of Economics student who later murdered The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, recording the crime on a video which has been seen worldwide. Another case of failed appeasement, like Israel’s regular releases of Palestinian terrorists.
With Indian commandos still freeing hostages, the usual voices in the West are busily disseminating their preferred version of events.
Typically, your ABC’s Sydney morning presenter Deborah Cameron spent much of Friday attempting to find guests who would agree with her theory that disparity of wealth was the motivating force behind the massacre.
This peculiar view is regularly trotted out by the soft-headed adherents of the suburban Left, who instinctively believe that a caring, sharing approach will persuade terrorists to leave their AK47s at home.
Nowhere has it worked.
Everywhere the terrorists have taken the money, or their freedom, and gone on to commit more and greater atrocities, having benefited from the West’s lack of intellectual resolve.
It is the same muddling nonsense that has prevented the West from blockading the Somali ports used by growing numbers of pirates, secure in the knowledge that they can exploit a torrent of sympathy by claiming that the vessels they hijack are owned by nations which support fishing fleets netting in their waters.
There is one Australian, of course, who knows well what lies in the minds of those who conducted the murderous raid on Mumbai - David Hicks.
He embraced radical Islam, trained in Pakistan with young men no different from those responsible for this atrocity and expressed his desire to kill Indians at the first opportunity.
He was a good hater, as his own letters to his family revealed. He wanted to overthrow what he termed “Western Jewish domination’’, he wanted to kill non-Muslims and he joined the Taliban after the World Trade Centre tower attacks.
Now, of course, he is the darling of a subset of the suburban Left, those who either have no memory, or no love of democracy nor grasp of morality.
The ABC should hire him as its terrorism commentator, when his control order lapses in three weeks. Source: Daily Telegraph
November 20, 2008
A CONTROL order on convicted terrorism supporter David Hicks will not be renewed when it expires next month, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) say.
The control order on Hicks expires on December 21.
"Following extensive consultation with a number of agencies, the AFP has decided it will not be seeking a further control order in respect of Mr Hicks," the police said today.
"The AFP has today advised the Attorney-General and Mr Hicks’ legal representative of its position."
After spending the past 12 months banned from using the internet or even a public phone without the consent of the AFP, Hicks broke his silence in a video released this morning pleading for the restrictions to be lifted. Source: The Australian
 By Peter Veness | November 20, 2008
FORMER Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks has broken his silence, saying a court-imposed control order makes it hard for him to get on with his life.
The convicted terrorism supporter says he is very worried that the controversial control order obtained by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to restrict his activities may be extended.
The one-year order, which expires in December, is only the second such order placed on an Australian citizen.
"I'm concerned that the AFP will recommend the attorney-general impose a new control order," Hicks says in a video seen by Australian Associated Press.
The control order was imposed on Hicks after he was freed from jail last December and revised in February.
Under the order, Hicks has to report to police twice a week. He can live anywhere in Australia approved by the AFP, but he is not allowed to leave the country.
He also has to submit to fingerprint testing and is barred from possessing any explosives or firearms or any materials related to weapons, combat skills or military tactics.
The video plea was organised by lobby group GetUp!, which has called for a major review of the 44 counter-terrorism laws introduced after the September 11 terrorism attacks.
"I don't know what the future holds for me. The only thing I do know is that until the control order is lifted, I will not be able to get on with my life,'' Hicks says.
It's almost seven years since the Adelaide man was caught in Afghanistan and sent to the US military base at Guantanamo Bay.
He was imprisoned there for six years, before agreeing to plead guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism in exchange for returning home to serve the remainder of his sentence in South Australia's Yatala prison.
He has received a number of requests to tell his story after the gag order imposed by US military officials expired last March, but he has kept his silence until today.
Hicks says he will tell his full story one day, but he is not ready to do it just yet.
"I'm still recovering from that ordeal. I'm not yet ready to explain what happened or why," Hicks said. Source: The Australian
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