What nobody here seems to get (because they are bogged down in legal technicalities) is that Hicks was an enemy combatant (the US said he was also "illegal"). All of the hi-falutin words here can't seem to bring themselves to a conclusion as to what we should do with illegal enemy combatants.

Legal enemy combatants (i.e. soldiers under the command of a nation) are not charged with anything when captured (unless they have committed war crimes) in war time. We don't whip together a tribunal and try them for shooting at us - we expect them to shoot at us. And once captured, we are obliged to do certain things with them as prisoners of war, including keeping them as prisoners until hostilities have finished.

Hicks wasn't entitled to the status of PoW. As a combatant, we were entitled to kill or capture him until the point he surrenders. What do we do then? Who does he belong to? In WWII, such combatants were simply shot. Trials? Never heard the word. Civilians engaging in battle were shot.

What is certain is that Hicks was legally detained (as a combatant he was removed from the battle), and should still be under the rules of war until the war has ceased. No charge is necessary. And as the war will never cease, he should never have been released.

The whole thing needs to be sorted out in a further development of the rules of war/ Geneva protocols etc to deal with irregular combatants.

And the bleeding hearts can just cry, cry cry.

Valley Guy,

"....aid person because they committed no crime ! Do we arrest every soldier because they have been training to commit murder ?"

Murder is the illegal killing of a fellow human being, soldiers train to kill legally; I know because I was trained to kill, but only legally, and studied Military Law at some length; promotion does not come in the Australian Army (and many others) without a sound knowledge of said law(s), the higher the promotion the more knowledge needed.

Well said Aristocrat

The loony left who troll this forum support anyone who hates the West:

So these trolls are Putin lovers, 911 "Truth" supporters and excuse an official graduate of an al Qaeda terrorist training camp.

If he repeated his acts today he would be very probably be locked up under Australia's Terrorism Laws.

How many genuinely disabled people will be denied pensions to pay for his million dollar medical compensation demands which may well cross-subsidise his lawyers' large, previously "pro bono" fees?

as I said in a previous post he can be the member for a western Sydney seat. He would fit in well with other criminals that the left make heroes of.

Three steel towers disappear into their own footprints at free fall speed. Apparently hit by two planes 3 buildings cave in with out demolition explosives. Of hundreds of cameras around the pentagon not a single bit of film can be produced which shows a plane hitting the building.

so maybe Osama' s had someone prepare explosives in the towers and the USA government was too embarrassed to fess up. But it's hardly credible that Osama arranged for one of his goons to hijack a military plane and fire a rocket into the pentagon. Well maybe he did. Amazing dude that Osama.

As for Hicks?
I remember Bush saying these extremists hate our freedoms and we will not permit them to destroy our freedoms.
Well torturing hicks is surrendering those freedoms
Bush and Howard are therefore also traitors.

" Of hundreds of cameras around the pentagon not a single bit of film can be produced which shows a plane hitting the building."
YEBIGA

About 30 seconds of browsing provided me with many videos, including:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzFqXbfv_yg

So how does a conspiracy theorist deal with information that contradicts their theory?
Option 1. Attack the information as "fabricated" or insufficient to explain the entire complex web of their belief
Option 2. Simply ignore the information, leaving out this one claim, but clinging to all the other "facts" that supposedly support their belief.
Option 3. Critically evaluate the theory in light of the insurmountable amount of contradicting evidence (Just kidding!)