Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Victory for Guantanamo Detainee David Hicks

Australian David Hicks, who has been held in Guantanamo Bay since the US invasion of Afghanistan has won a great battle.

Since Australia refused to buck Taikoh and demand its own citizen back as Britain had done, as a last gambit to free himself from the dodgy grasp of the American military, Hicks applied for British citizenship based on his mother being British.

The Blair government had rejected his application but Hicks took the matter to the British High Court which has just approved his appeal. The British High Court has ordered the British government to register Hick's citizenship immediately.

The British government can still appeal but the High Court has refused to grant a stay of its decision, meaning it has rejected the government's dilly dallying attempt which would have forced Hicks to face the US military court. There are now plans to have Hicks formalise his new British citizenship with an allegiance ceremony right inside Guantanamo prison.

Once that is done, the British government is obliged to repatriate Hicks back to Britain as it had done so for a number of British citizens previously held at Guantanamo. All have been released without any charges for the reason they were held by the Americans on nothing more than flimsy suspicion.

If the British government attempts to strip away Hicks citizenship after granting him that, on the basis that he is facing charges (by the US military) prejudicial to the security of Britain, in order to deny him repatriation to Britain, his lawyer plans to have Hicks renounced his Australian citizenship so that the British government will be stopped from the stripping act, as Britain cannot allow its citizen to become stateless.

More on this later ..... last night I had prepared a more comprehensive background to this case which unfortunately was 'lost' when I woke up this morning - I found my draft chopped up?

Related:
(1) An Abandoned Citizen
(2) Kangaroo Court No 2 - the case of David Hicks
(3) US Military Legal System An Absolute Disgrace
(4) Former Guantanamo Detainee Attacked & Warned to Shut Up

2 comments:

  1. The US' sole superpower status allows it to choose those people it wishes to lockup without charge or to "disappear" poeple in sponsored third country torture chambers. This info is all coming out in the UK.

    I think its impressive that good old British decency is rolling back Bush/Blair. More power to it.

    Meanwhile "draft chopped up"! Thats terrible - I hope its not unsubtle censorship.

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  2. "draft chopped up"!

    Happened a couple of times to me after I have "lovingly" ;-) prepared a draft the night before and saved it. Comes morning when I wanted to publish, I found chunks 'gone'?

    There's a "recover post" function, but it's useless.

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