David Hicks

[HarveyGee]

So Hicks comes back on a G5 at a reported (but hard to believe) cost of $500,000. I note that it was a US aircraft. I'm sure there are Aussie operators that could have handled this job. Brickbats to the Feds on this !! Then we have reportedly 40 cops from SA needed to take him from Edinburgh to Yatala. Ditto the SA Govt!!.

Both exercises seem to me a profligate waste of taxpayers' money and a gross overreaction to a relatively simple and straightforward task.

[Bankstownboy]

Wonder how much danger money the flight crew got paid for that one...

[Buster Hyman]

Yeah, its not like he's a convicted terrorist or anything! Sit him down the back with the UM's, I'm sure the hosties could whip out the cufflinks & keep him quiet!:}

[Super 64]

Not wanting to be the conspiracy theorist, but a bit of research might answer why.


Read this first, - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/national/31planes.html?ei=5090&en=6087acc3480a296c&ex=1275192000&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1179741605-LIHZFbub3En/Ow9xORcmMw
then:


Put the rego N90AM in here - http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_inquiry.asp


Note the company name and address.


Put the address (street and city) into google. A bit more research should bring you to here - http://www.atlanticaviation.com/locations/teb.html


Spoooooky!


But I’ll leave you intelligent chaps to make up your own mind.


S64


*Apologies I couldn't get the hyperlinks to work

[THE IRON MAIDEN]

I've been at this game for a few years now, and I STILL haven’t seen the inside of a G-V or IV for that matter!
Maybe I should go to Iraq, get caught, and in a few years, G-V here I come!
- The TV report giving a running commentary of the approach to land was BRILLIANT :ok:
I quote: "He's now parallel to the runway, at about 500 feet above the ground, coming down at a great speed"
Didn't know a G-V would be flying a low level circuit and DESCENDING when on downwind....
All in all an utter waste of taxpayer money (and News viewers time)

[Buster Hyman]

I may not be intelligent enough to figure out what was so spooky...but I do know how to spell descending!
:}:ouch::suspect:

[gaunty]

Harvey Gee. me old.:ok:

$0.5 mill is about right.

Yes there are local aircraft that can do it but I can think of a dozen reasons why I would not let mine out for this task. I suspect they could not find any local takers.

I suspect that there were some very good security reasons why the steps taken were, and why.

Simple yes, but then the guys who did the 911 gig weren't rocket scientists either.

The thing that has me stuffed is how he managed to get out at all and is somehow now some sort of local hero.

[FlexibleResponse]

He pleaded guilty to assisting terrorism.

Many hope he rots in hell when he finally gets there...

[gassed budgie]

The thing that has me stuffed is how he managed to get out at all and is somehow now some sort of local hero


He certainly seems to some sort of pin up for the journo's at fairfax. I haven't spoken to anyone at all who thinks he's a hero, just a d!ckhead. I must be moving in the wrong circles.

[YesTAM]

I have some sympathy for anyone who has been "played" through a rotten legal process. If you want me to confess to something, just lock me up and tell me there is no way I'm getting out unless I "confess" - thats whats been done to Hicks, at the very minimum.

As for Hicks himself, I suspect that he is no better, and no worse, then some of the loony army recruits I remember from my infantry days (a very long time ago). They joined up with romantic ideas about being a "warrior poet" fighting from freedom against the forces of evil, which they were happy to share with their conscripted colleagues. All usually went quite well with these types for about two weeks.........then reality set in, bigtime. I remember the RMO (Who thankfully had psychiatric training) talking one of these guys down from his position, stark naked and holding a loaded rifle, on the roof of the barracks.

I put Jihad Jack Thomas in this category, as I know of him from people who grew up with him, and Hicks action of trying to bug out from Kabul, selling his rifle and heading for home, sounds to me like the actions of someone for whom "jihad" has suddenly lost its appeal.

.......but what the heck would I know?

[OZBUSDRIVER]

Hicks had form. The scary thing is the media lie is starting to get traction, even my wife is believing that he was harshly done by. There was a time when mercenarys were executed on the battlefield whenever they were captured.

Hicks was caught in the field of battle supporting the wrong side. This will come down to whether you believe Kelly was a hero or a cop killer.

[Metro man]

Prehaps he could be asked to repay the cost of his trip home, just like other people who get assistance from the Australian embassy are ? No passport until it's repaid.

[Whiskey Oscar Golf]

After all the fuss they did need to put on a bit of a show. How would it have looked if they walked him off a 330 with a couple of suits on either side. Doesn't exactly justify his 5 years without trial and dangerous freak status if he's treated like a normal crim.

I think Hicks should have stayed in Australia rather than venturing off on his Jihad adventures. He could have been a Nominee for an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. He'd still be in jail and it would have been cheaper, would've suited his living on the edge dreams too.

[ABX]

Morning OzBD,

This will come down to whether you believe Kelly was a hero or a cop killer.

Cop killing a$$hole from my P.O.V.

[Buster Hyman]

I'll second that ABX.

[OZBUSDRIVER]

Amen! Amen! guilty as charged!

[Like This - Do That]

Kelly? Crook, scum, hanging too good for 'im!

Now I've got that off my chest, I'll try to raise the tone a little. Hicks has been made a bit of a poster boy for the lefty luvvies who are lapping this up as part of their self hatred and general loathing of modern Western (read 'US') society. Similarly there are some who are incandescent with rage that the bloke wasn't shot when captured. Frankly my own natural reaction is that the bloke is a stupid prick who should have been taken 'round the back of the sheds and given a thumping years ago :ouch:. The truth, as always, is a bit more complicated.

* * * Caveat - I'm not a barrister or solicitor, I've just done some reading. If I've misrepresented the facts or if my understanding of the law is crook I apologise and am happy to be corrected. * * *

If he's a belligerent in an ongoing war, and he has been captured (by hook or by crook) in the warzone, no matter what the status of the war. He was captured by one side (and the whole Northern Alliance prisoner selling business muddies the waters a little) and detained as a combatant / belligerent. Now here are some tricky bits .....

1. Let's agree that the war in Afghanistan is still going between the legitimate government and the Taliban & Al Qa'eda.
2. He was not arrested by a police force.

Surely these 2 facts mean that his continuing detention is perfectly legal? Let's forget the nature of any criminal trial, trumped up charges, torture, Gitmo 'hell hole' etc. Probably irrelevant. He's a captured belligerent during an ongoing war. He can stay locked up.

Over to y'all again. Cheers

[Flight Detent]

I had to laugh when the news reporter, looking all serious when he started to quote the details of the Hicks saga, you know, what time he left, arrives, etc.

But then he blew it all when he said Hicks was travelling in a Gulfstream "Gee-Vee", as it then became very obvious he knew absolutely nothing about civil aviation.

As he continued on, in the serious tone, I couldn't stop laughing!!

Cheers...FD...:ugh:

[YesTAM]

Hicks was caught in the field of battle supporting the wrong side.

No he wasn't, he was grabbed by the Northern Alliance as he was heading for the Pakistan border and sold to the Americans. He has never fired a shot at Americans or Australians either.

In fact, what Hicks was doing was not even a crime in Australia at the time.


.....But don't let the facts stand in the way of a good argument:yuk:

[ABX]

YesTAM,

Perhaps you could cite your sources for us? I'd be most interested to read up on that. :ok:

Thanks.

[Wanderin_dave]

Now i'm not very well versed in these matters, but why not send over a RAAF Challenger? Hasn't got the legs of a Gee-Vee:D, but could surely have done the job for under half a mil.

ABX- It was actually the US military prosecuters themselves that said Hicks had never fired a shot in anger.

The whole process of having a person held without charge for YEARS, regardless of the outcome, just makes me hang my head in shame. How we as a country not only accept, but endorse this process is appalling.

For the record, i think the guy's a f***wit.

[bizzybody]

i read in the paper that the flight wasorganised through ADAgold aviation. www.adagold.com.au (http://www.adagold.com.au)
they are not a charter company but a broker or sorts.

I cant find the link but it was on the daily telegraph site

[Wiley]

With a bit of luck, when the hick is allowed to open his mouth in public, he'll make as big a fool of himself almost as quickly as the last 'oppressed champion' the cuddlies rescued from the Yanks' Cuban holiday camp.

...maybe even before Bob Brown tries to get him to stand for Parliament for his crowd.

[HotDog]

ABX, YesTAM's source was Wikepedia. Hicks was captured by an Afgan warlord and sold to the Northern Alliance authorities for USD 1000. What YesTAM failed to convey, was the preceding paragraphs in the Wikepedia report. Interesting reading!
[edit] Early life
David Hicks was born in Adelaide, South Australia, son of Terry and Susan, who are British citizens by birth. He has one sister. His parents separated when he was ten years old, his father later remarrying.[11][12] Hicks was expelled from school at age 14.[13]
Described by his father as "a typical boy who couldn't settle down",[13] and by his old school mates from Salisbury High as a heavy drinker and cannabis smoker who would use a compass to scratch satanic symbols into his arm,[5] Hicks moved between various jobs. These jobs included skinning kangaroos at a meat-packing factory, fishing for sharks, and working at a series of outback cattle stations in the Northern Territory, Queensland, and South Australia. It was at a cattle station that he met his wife by common-law Jodie Sparrow in 1992. Hicks and Sparrow had two children before separating in 1996. He eventually lost contact with his two young children. "He used to pinch cars and you know, that sort of stuff. Like, that was the only way he sort of fed himself and that." remembers Sparrow. [13][5] After their separation Hicks moved to Japan to become a horse trainer.[13]
[edit] Militant activity
David Hicks, on the left, posing with a Rocket propelled grenade (RPG) on his first day of training with the KLA in Albania [14]In 1999, Hicks traveled to Albania, where he joined the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a paramilitary organization of ethnic Albanians fighting against Serbian forces in the Kosovo War, and served with them for two months. [15] On returning to Australia Hicks applied to join the Australian Army but was rejected due to his low level of formal education.[5] Hicks then converted to Islam and began to study Arabic.[16]
On November 11, 1999,[14] Hicks traveled to Pakistan to study Islam.[17] After a period of time he began training with the Lashkar-e-Toiba [18] learning guerrilla warfare, weapons training (including landmines), kidnapping techniques, and assassination methods.[2] In a March 2000 letter, Hicks told his family
"don't ask what's happened, I can't be bothered explaining the outcome of these strange events has put me in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in a training camp. Three months training. After which it is my decision whether to cross the line of control into Indian-occupied Kashmir."[19]
In another letter on August 10, 2000, Hicks wrote from Kashmir, claiming to have been a guest of Pakistan's army for two weeks at the front in the "controlled war" with India.[19] At the time, Lashkar-e-Toiba was an Islamic fighting group that had widespread support in Pakistan. It had a reputation for being focused on fighting India in Kashmir but was also accused of attacks against Indian civilians. After the September 11, 2001 attacks and its banning as a terrorist group by Pakistan in January 2002, Lashkar-e-Toiba fragmented and branched out into sectarian violence.[20][21] Lashkar-e-Toiba was banned in Australia in 2003.[22]
A "resentful and deeply unflattering" handwritten memoir signed by Feroz Abbasi while incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, later repudiated by Abbasi on October 20, 2004, in another signed statement, claimed Hicks was "Al-Qaedah's 24 ct. [carat] Golden Boy" and "obviously the favorite recruit" of their al-Qaeda trainers during exercises at the al-Farouq camp near Kandahar.[23]The failed British shoe bomber Richard Colvin Reid was another graduate of the camp. The memoir made a number of (hearsay) allegations, including that Hicks was teamed in the training camp with Filipino recruits from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and that during internment in Camp X-Ray, "Hicks [said] he was praying to Satan for help". Hicks "attended a number of al-Qaeda training courses at various camps around Afghanistan, including an advanced course on surveillance, in which he conducted surveillance of the US and British embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan". [2] On one occasion when al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden visited an Afghan camp, Hicks questioned bin Laden about the lack of English in training material and subsequently "began to translate the training camp materials from Arabic to English".[2] Hicks wrote home that he'd met Osama bin Laden 20 times, later telling investigators that he'd exaggerated. He'd seen bin Laden about eight times and spoken to him only once.[24]Prosecutors also allege Hicks was interviewed by Muhammad Atef, an al-Qaeda military commander, about his background and "the travel habits of Australians".[2] The US Department of Defense statement claimed "that after viewing TV news coverage in Pakistan of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, [Hicks] returned to Afghanistan to rejoin his al-Qaeda associates to fight against US, British, Canadian, Australian, Afghan, and other coalition forces [...] It is alleged Hicks armed himself with an AK-47 automatic rifle, ammunition, and grenades to fight against coalition forces."[2]
Hicks spoke to his parents from just outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in November 2001. "He said something about going off to Kabul to defend it against the Northern Alliance," Terry Hicks said.

[socks and thongs]

ABX, from the age

David Hicks is one of about 75 detainees of the United States' "war" on terror likely to face charges and a US military commission.

Under President George W. Bush's original military commissions, Hicks was charged with conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy.

The prosecution alleged Hicks had trained at al-Qaeda camps, translated training manuals into English for the terror group, knew Osama bin Laden, conducted surveillance on US and other embassies, and was armed to battle coalition forces in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Hicks’ defence lawyer Major Michael Mori described the charges as weak, pointing out that Hicks’ Arabic skills were minimal, and that several of the embassies were no longer used at the time of Hicks’ alleged surveillance work.

The charges against Hicks were dropped when the US Supreme Court ruled the first military commission model illegal in mid-2006.

Major Mori said in response to Colonel Davis’ allegations that no proof of Hicks’ alleged al-Qaeda membership or of his willingness to fight coalition troops had ever been revealed.
He says Hicks did not break any US or Australian laws.

In February 2007, Hicks' prosecutors drafted fresh charges against him under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The fresh charges were attempted murder and providing material support for terrorism.

Colonel Davis said there was no evidence that Hicks had injured or killed anybody in Afghanistan.

Major Mori questioned the retention of the attempted murder charge and said the charge of providing material support for terrorism was based on retrospective legislation.
The draft charges against Hicks
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/d2007Hicks%20-%20Notification%20of%20Sworn%20Charges.pdf
The original charges against Hicks
http://www.theage.com.au/multimedia/hicks/chargesheet.pdf

[Whiskey Oscar Golf]

While I'm no fan of detention without trial, the thing I find interesting in the current asymmetric war we find ourselves in, is do we wait for someone to commit an act of evil? Or do we attempt to stop that act before it occurs? If we bang them up before they do their evil then the civil libertarians will speak loudly. If we wait for the act, who tells the families of the innocents? It's a hard line we have to take these days and open to some abuses but what are the consequences of not acting.

[Dawn Raid]

I'm sure I read somewhere that Hick's father - Terry, was nominated for Australian father of the year for the support he has provided his son throughout the 5 years he spent in Cuba.

From what I have seen on TV he is nothing but anti-govt and is quite vocal about it.

[Taildragger67]

I suspect I'd be rather ticked off if the powers-that-be could do something about a close family member's situation and deliberately chose not to (irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the person involved).

[Sunray Minor]

Peter Griffin,

Simple; he surrendered his rights as a citizen of this country when he took up arms against it.

Come again? When exactly did he do this?

[Taildragger67]

IMHO the problem has become one of a lack of leadership and follow-up; the US had goodwill from just about every country - even Iran, Cuba and Venezuela - in the days following 11 September 2001 - but the administration managed to successfully p!ss that all away.

The Hicks thing is part of that. Right or wrong, the processes put in place were flawed. 'Fog of war' and all that aside, the process then became one away from the battlefield and it has been very poorly handled.

The one thing Blair has done right is to see that the whole Gitmo process was going nowhere, was going to end up becoming a cluster-fcuk and defused it in the UK before it became a political issue. Now, far from being forgotten, the administration has let this become a political black hole.