David Hicks: Guantanamo Poster Boy for the Military Commissions Bill

Kurt Nimmo
Oct. 18, 2006

“Accused Australian terrorist David Hicks is expected to be tried by a revamped military commission next year after US President George W. Bush yesterday signed controversial new legislation into law,” reports the Australian.

Not mentioned is the fact David Hicks, also known as Abu Muslim al-Austraili and Mohammed Dawood, “served” with the Taliban and “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan, both well-documented CIA-ISI operations. In addition, Hicks “served” with the KLA, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, a gang of drug-running thugs protected by the CIA, according to ERPKIM Info Service of the Diocese of Raska-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija Serbian Orthodox Church, and “politically empowered by NATO, beginning in 1998″ (Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, New Haven: Yale UP, 2002, 120; also see Peter Dale Scott, Al Qaeda, U.S. Oil Companies, and Central Asia). “During his stint as NATO Supreme Commander (1997-2000), Wesley Clark was in permanent liaison with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “Under Wesley Clark’s command, NATO directly sponsored a terrorist paramilitary army, with links to Al Qaeda and the trans-Balkan narcotics trade.”

According to an indictment prepared by military commission, on August 26, 2004, Hicks traveled to Pakistan, where he joined the paramilitary Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Toiba, funded and provided with material assistance by Pakistan intelligence, and is connected to al-Muhajiroun, the London-based Islamic organization recruited by MI6 to fight in Serbia, according to Oldham MP and former cabinet minister Michael Meacher (see Britain recruited terrorists, Meacher claims, the Asian News).

Hicks trained for two months at a Lashkar-e-Toiba camp in Pakistan, according to the military commission, where he received weapons training, and in 2000 he served with a Lashkar-e-Toiba group near the Pakistan-Kashmir, in other words, again, he worked for Pakistan’s ISI, basically a CIA proxy.

In January, 2001, Hicks trekked to Afghanistan, under the control of the Taliban regime, where he presented a letter of introduction from Lashkar-e-Toiba to Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a senior “al-Qaeda” member, and was given the alias “Mohammed Dawood.” As we know, the Taliban were incubated in CIA-ISI sponsored madrasas in Pakistan. “In an interview broadcast by the BBC World Service on 4 October 1996, Pakistanâ€™s then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto affirmed that the madrasas had been set up by Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Jihad, the Islamic resistance against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,” writes Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, citing an article published in the New York Times, 26 May 1997.

In Afghanistan, Hicks was sent to the al-CIA-duh al-Farouq training camp outside Kandahar where he trained for eight weeks, receiving weapons training and training with land mines and explosives. In other words, Hicks trained in camps originally established by the CIA, set-up to train mujahideen “for eight weeks, receiving further weapons training as well as training with land mines and explosives,” writes Phil Gasper. “In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, [35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East] met each other for the first time and studied trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism,” with a price tag estimated between $3 billion and $6 billion, or more.

“It is no secret, especially in the region, that the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been supporting the fundamentalist Taliban in their war for control of Afghanistan for some time. The US has never openly acknowledged this connection, but it has been confirmed by both intelligence sources and charitable institutions in Pakistan,” explains William O. Beeman, an anthropologist specializing in the Middle East at Brown University (see previous link).

In addition, “John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American ‘black Muslims’ were taught ’sabotage skills,’” writes Norm Dixon.

The U.S. government also alleges Hicks went to another training camp at Tarnak Farm, where he studied ‘urban tactics,’ including the use of assault and sniper rifles, rappelling, kidnapping and assassination techniques, under Mohammed Atef, supposedly the “military chief” of “al-Qaeda.” These “urban tactics,” according to Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin, were taught by “Americans” who were “keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism—car bombing and so on—so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns … Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate” (see previous link).

Finally, David Hicks made the mistake of helping the Taliban and other Afghans defend their country against the illegal U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, thus rendering him an “unlawful combatant” and outside the normal protections of U.S. law and the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He was captured in December, 2001, and sent to GuantÃ¡namo Bay in Cuba, where camp authorities placed him in solitary confinement. “This move was described as a routine measure because of the detainee impending attendance at their tribunals,” notes Wikipedia. “However The Jurist reported on August 23, 2006 that Hicks remains in solitary, seven weeks following the US Supreme Court’s confirmation of a lower court’s ruling that the commissions were unconstitutional. According to The Jurist Hicks extended stay in solitary confinement has put his health at risk…. Major Michael Mori, described Hicks as one of the best-behaved detainees, and said his solitary confinement was unnecessary.”

In addition, even though he was in solitary, Hick was accused of partaking in a suicide plot, and his legal papers were seized by camp authorities. Hicks’ military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, stated that Hicks thus lost what shred of attorney-client communication he enjoyed. As an ironic sidebar, it should be noted that camp authorities claimed “that they found notes on how to tie a hangman’s noose written on the stationery issued to the lawyers who meet with detainees to discuss their habeas corpus requests,” according to Wikipedia, not a problem now, as habeas corpus is dead in the water.

No doubt, in the weeks ahead, David Hicks, essentially a dispensible patsy, will be held up as an example why we need the Military Commissions Act of 2006, described as “a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill he knows will save American lives,” according to the unitary decider, never mind that David Hicks threatened not a single American, with the possible exception of U.S. soldiers who participated in the invasion of Afghanistan, planned well in advance of the attacks of September 11, 2001, according to Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary.