SYDNEY, 13 November 2003 — The father of an Australian man being held at a US Navy base in Cuba slammed the Australian prime minister yesterday for saying his government has no plans to bring home terror suspects to face trial here.
Speaking to reporters while in London on Tuesday, Prime Minister John Howard said David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, Australian suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay, did not have an automatic right of repatriation since they were arrested outside of Australia.
“A lot of the debate in Australia seems to have proceeded on the basis that if you’re arrested for something overseas, you can demand that you be brought back to Australia to be tried. That’s not true,” Howard told reporters.
Howard’s comments followed an agreement on Monday by the US Supreme Court to hear appeals by more than 650 foreign prisoners currently being held without charge at the base, on whether they can launch legal challenges in US courts to their imprisonment.
“I mean, if a foreigner comes to Australia and does something that we think is contrary to our law or does something elsewhere that is contrary to our law and we have control of him, the idea that a foreign government could insist that he be returned is not something that we would support,” Howard said.
Terry Hicks said Howard’s comments were a warning to all Australians that they would get no support from their government should they fall foul of another country’s laws.
“What would happen if one of his soldiers were caught somewhere? Would he say ‘The Iraqis have got him, who cares?”’ Hicks told the Associated Press by telephone from the southern Australian city of Adelaide. “If David’s guilty of anything, I know he’s my son, but he’s got to wear it. He hasn’t been charged with anything so why is John Howard acting like he’s guilty?”
“Howard is saying that the Australian government will no longer back up its Australian citizens overseas,” Hicks said.
Hicks, a former Australian cowboy who converted to Islam, will be among the first six Guantanamo Bay detainees to face a hearing by a US military commission, a date for which is still to be announced. He was captured fighting with the Taleban in Afghanistan in December 2001 and transferred to the US military prison in Cuba.
Three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Habib, 47, was arrested by police in Pakistan on suspicion of training with Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. He was sent to Egypt, the country of his birth, and later to Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held since May 2002.
