JAG CENTRAL

Australian David Hicks, Guantanamo Detainee (ABC, Australia)

From the NY Times, Australian Group Campaigns to Free Guantanamo Prisoner:

In a little more than a week, a new grass-roots political movement here has gathered more than 7,000 names of supporters on its Web site in a campaign to free David Hicks, an Australian citizen being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The organization, GetUp!, was founded this month by two young Australians. They collected the names for a letter to the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, demanding that he take action to have Mr. Hicks, 30, brought back to Australia to stand trial.

Mr. Hicks was taken prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2001 and sent to Guantánamo. In June 2004, American prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy.

Australian officials have said repeatedly that he has not violated any Australian laws, so bringing him back would likely be tantamount to giving him his freedom.

"We're blown away," Lachlan Harris, a spokesman for GetUp!, said about the response to the campaign. "Signing a letter for someone accused of serious crimes is not something one does lightly."

A spokesman for Mr. Downer dismissed the campaign. "It's another group attacking the Howard government," said the spokesman, Chris Kenny, referring to Prime Minister John Howard. "What's new?"

GetUp! describes itself as a progressive organization - its founders say they were inspired by the left-leaning American advocacy group MoveOn.org, - but its campaign coincides with a growing discomfort among Australians across the political spectrum over the lengthy detention of Mr. Hicks and the fact that American officials plan to try him in a secret military tribunal rather than in open court. In closed-door meetings of Mr. Howard's center-right Liberal Party, increasing numbers of party members are expressing concern.

In a break from the normal practice of not speaking on political issues, the chief justice of the Supreme Court for the country's most populous state, New South Wales, who is a Labor government appointee, this week offered a glancing criticism of the American procedures. "Military justice bears the same relationship to justice as military music does to music," the justice, Jim Spigelman, told The Sydney Morning Herald.

VERY ORIGINAL, Justice Spigelman...would you like to make a joke about military intelligence while you're at it? They should give him his own show on Comedy Central...moron. By the way, I happen to like a little John Philip Souza now and then...

From the Washington Post, S. Korea Says Papers Prove War Crimes:

South Korean officials said documents declassified on Friday offer proof that the Japanese government remains legally responsible for crimes it committed during its 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula, including forcing Korean women into sexual slavery.

The documents stem from secret talks between South Korea and Japan in 1951 and 1965, which led to the establishment of diplomatic ties and a Japanese payment of $800 million in compensation to South Korea.


In a statement, the South Korean prime minister's office said it would pursue efforts to force Japan to take responsibility for what it says were crimes against humanity committed before and during World War II.

"The illegal activities against humanity, including the issue of comfort women, committed by the Japanese government and army cannot be seen as resolved by the [1965] treaty," the statement said. Comfort women is a euphemism for the estimated 200,000 women, most of them Koreans, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese occupation army.

Categories: Hicks, Australia, Guantanamo, Tribunals, South+Korea, War+Crimes, Japan, Nespapers