Some Australians are getting irked that one of their own, David Hicks, captured working alongside the Taliban, is still sitting in Guantanamo Bay with other Taliban prisoners, not in a civilian courtroom like John Walker Lindh.
“Why the double standard?” they ask. Why should an Aussie face a military tribunal, while Lindh (or Walker, or whatever his lawyer says he wants to be called this week) gets a relatively cushy federal court hearing?
Well, first off, Lindh is still (odiously) a US citizen. That excludes him from the military tribunal orders.
“But then why not turn Hicks over to an Australian court?”
Because we’ve got him. The US military captured him, as an “illegal combatant,” and so bears responsibility for dealing with him. Indeed:
[Australian Attorney General Darryl] Williams says “neither the US nor Australia is in a position to begin a prosecution against Hicks,” acknowledging that he may not have committed any offenses under Australian law.
That sounds like a good reason right there to keep him where he is for the moment.
Some of this may be a tempest in a teapot, as public opinion in Australia seems against Hicks; only the Aussie pundits are getting on their high horse.
Perhaps the best indicator of the changing tone is the popular press, which a month ago labeled Hicks a traitor. This week, Sydney’s Sun-Herald said he was not a traitor but “a naive, patently stupid young man who chose the wrong heroes.”
Yeah, that probably describes quite a few folks who still remain quite guilty of the crimes which they then commit, whether or not treason is among them.