'Aussie Taliban' David Hicks appeals Guantanamo conviction
Washington (AFP) - Australian David Hicks, who entered a guilty plea at a 2007 military tribunal at the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison, filed an appeal Tuesday seeking to overturn his conviction.
Hicks' attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights said they were filing their appeal following a court ruling last year in a different terror-related case, which held that the charge he was convicted of -- providing material support for terrorism -- is not a war crime.
"The (Washington) DC court's rejection of material support as a war crime is a reminder that a military commission prosecution can unravel at any time," said Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the CCR.
"Years after Hicks was convicted and served his sentence, a federal court has concluded that the process by which he was convicted was unlawful," Dixon said.
The case in question, involving Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged driver for Osama bin Laden, was ruled by the court to be outside the scope of the military commission.
Another Guantanamo detainee, alleged Al-Qaeda propagandist Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul, has filed a similar appeal as Hicks' -- also based on the Washington court's finding.
Hicks, during his trial at Guantanamo, submitted an "Alford plea," a form of admission under US law in which a defendant, while maintaining his innocence, pleads guilty in hopes of receiving a lesser punishment.
In a statement, released by the CCR, he said the plea had been coerced by prosecutors and that he did so only to escape ongoing abuse and torture at Guantanamo.
"Today is just the first step in a long process to correct the wrongs committed against me," Hicks said.
"I was detained for six years without having committed an offense... and was tortured and pressured with duress into making unfair decisions which did not reflect the facts," the Australian said.
"I had no choice but to sign the plea deal or I would have died in Guantanamo."
Hicks was returned to Australia in April 2007 following a plea deal that saw him serve a nine-month sentence on home soil for providing material support for terrorism, after the five-and-a-half years he spent in Guantanamo.
The former cattleman, once dubbed the "Aussie Taliban," has penned a controversial memoir describing "six years of hell" at Guantanamo, where he said he endured deprivation and witnessed acts of brutality after being captured in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
He acknowledges in it having taken part in paramilitary training in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as having taken part in conflicts in Kosovo and Kashmir, but claims he was a "political scapegoat" and said he never had extremist intentions.
Of the 779 inmates who have passed through Guantanamo, only seven have been convicted of a crime -- one of the reasons that rights activists have been so adamant that the facility should be shuttered.
