Australian First to Face Guantanamo Tribunal

Five years after being brought to Guantánamo Bay in shackles, the Australian David Hicks was produced for an arraignment hearing yesterday in a test of the Bush administration's new system of military tribunals.

Mr Hicks, 31, was clean-shaven but his hair hung well below the shoulders of his khaki prison jumpsuit. He has told his lawyers he grew his hair to block the constant light in his cell.

The former kangaroo skinner said he would wait to enter a plea on the single charge he faces of providing material support for terrorism. But he asked for more lawyers after the marine colonel judge barred two of his three lawyers from the tribunal. "I'm shocked because I just lost another lawyer," Mr Hicks told the court.

The Bush administration's system of military tribunals has been widely condemned by legal and human rights organisations, and Mr Hicks has told his lawyers he does not expect a fair trial.

The decision not to enter a plea yesterday fuelled speculation that Mr Hicks was considering a deal, presumably in exchange for a shortened sentence, after a confinement that is believed to have left him physically and mentally broken. "He's been in the western world's most notorious prison for five years, the last year or so in pretty much isolation," David McLeod, an Australian lawyer, told National Public Radio. "It's been a pretty rough trot over the past five years. And if it was yourself, you would be thinking, I suspect, about how to get out of this place."

Although Pentagon officials concede Mr Hicks may not have fired a shot at US forces during the 2001 war in Afghanistan, he could face a 20-year sentence if convicted. Under a diplomatic deal, Mr Hicks would serve that term in Australia.

Yesterday was Mr Hicks' first appearance in public for three years, and his father and sister joined dozens of lawyers, representatives of human rights organisations and journalists at the court.

The latest version of the hearings was authorised by Congress late last year after the supreme court struck down earlier war crimes tribunals. Mr Hicks has been a casualty of that legal confusion which caused a nearly three-year hiatus in his trial proceedings. However, the tribunals have been widely condemned for allowing the use of secret evidence and evidence obtained through torture.

Mr Hicks is the first detainee at Guantánamo to get a hearing in court under the new tribunals. Only nine inmates have been formally charged to date.

In a nine-page charge sheet, the Pentagon says Mr Hicks began his journey to militancy in 1999 when he converted to Islam. It says he fought in Kosovo and Kashmir before receiving training from al-Qaida in Afghanistan in early 2001. He watched the September 11 2001 terror attacks from a friend's house in Pakistan, it says "and expressed his approval".

But the charge sheet suggests Mr Hicks was only the most minor foot soldier for al-Qaida. He spent the first two weeks of the war in Afghanistan hundreds of miles from the fighting, guarding a tank in Kandahar. He did eventually go to Kunduz, but the charge sheet says: "Hicks spent two hours on the frontline before it collapsed and he was forced to flee."