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Hicks to open Guantanamo tribunal
Australian David Hicks is set to become the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to attend a hearing under revised US military tribunal rules.
His lawyers said they may plea bargain to avoid a full trial and try to have him handed into Australian custody.
Otherwise, Mr Hicks should proceed to the full trial by July.
David Hicks is the first to be charged under the new Military Commissions Act, accused of training and fighting with al-Qaeda and the Taleban.
'Razor denied'
One of Mr Hicks's defence team, David McLeod, said nothing had yet been decided on a possible plea bargain.
He said the five years his client had spent at the Cuban base had "begun to take a toll".
"Today he had dark, sunken eyes and he looked very tired," Mr McLeod said after a meeting with Mr Hicks on Sunday.
"If it was yourself I suspect you would be thinking about how to get out of this place."
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6494281.stm
Otherwise, Mr Hicks should proceed to the full trial by July.
David Hicks is the first to be charged under the new Military Commissions Act, accused of training and fighting with al-Qaeda and the Taleban.
'Razor denied'
One of Mr Hicks's defence team, David McLeod, said nothing had yet been decided on a possible plea bargain.
He said the five years his client had spent at the Cuban base had "begun to take a toll".
"Today he had dark, sunken eyes and he looked very tired," Mr McLeod said after a meeting with Mr Hicks on Sunday.
"If it was yourself I suspect you would be thinking about how to get out of this place."
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6494281.stm
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David McLeod said his client had decided to attempt a plea deal after losing hope of a fair trial.
A plea deal would avert the need for a trial and possibly see Hicks tranfered to Australian custody.
"He wants to get out of here," Mr McLeod told reporters at Guantanamo on Sunday.
"All of the options obviously have to be discussed, from not guilty and tough it out, through to 'How do I get out of here at the earliest opportunity.
Discussions on a plea deal began in January but both sides have declined to reveal the terms of any proposals.
Hicks, 31, a former kangaroo skinner and a convert to Islam, has been accused of training at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and briefly fighting alongside the Taliban following the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.
He has been awaiting trial at the camp since January 2002 and is due to face a pre-trial arraignment hearing on a war-crime charge on Monday.
His lawyers say they expect him to plead innocent if he is required to enter a plea to the charge of providing material support for terrorism, allegations the US is keen to prove.
Tribunal
"His support for the al-Qaeda organisation is what we intend to prove," Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the tribunals, said.
If convicted, Hicks could be sentenced to life in prison but Davis said he plans to use the case of John Walker Lindh, the American-born Taliban soldier who was given a 20-year sentence, as a precedent.
Hicks has previously appeared before an earlier military tribunal system created by a presidential order, which the US Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional.
Last year however the then Republican-controlled US Congress last year, then under a Republican majority, passed a law authorising a reconstituted tribunal regime with some adjustments but still operating outside of regular US courts or military courts-martial.
The commission law allows for hearsay, evidence obtained through "coercion" and bars detainees from appealing their detention in US courts.
Mental health
Speaking to reporters at Guantanamo, McLeod said his client was showing signs of weariness after five years of living alone in a small cell.
More
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B55DC6A8-4C3C-4617-905D-A6EA1465C6FD.htm