"In other words, David, many insightful Australians understand you pleaded guilty only to get the hell out of the gulag of Guantanamo."

You fail to consider the other possible reason he pleaded guilty: he WAS guilty.

Asimana, I don't know whether Australia was directly involved in the Balkans conflict, but NATO was on the side of the KLA - the same group David Hicks was fighting for. So in that case our close allies were hardly "playing our part in opposing the forces which David Hicks has supported in an active, warlike role."

That's the difficulty in this type of situation. Geopolitics throws up all sorts of situations where governments (including our own) support thoroughly nasty and violent regimes at different times in history (think Saddam in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, heaps more I could list here). However much we may dislike the causes Hicks espoused when he was training in Afghanistan, the fact was that the regime was not a declared enemy of Australia at the time and therefore it's hardly fair to convict him for what wasn't then a crime.

Why does it seem that debate about Hicks polarises into seeing him as entirely victim or entirely perpetrator? Surely he’s both.

By his own admission he’s participated in religiously motivated violence, an admirer of Bin Laden, and a supporter of terrorism. As best he’s sad, sick and screwed up, at worst a terrorist trained Islamofascist. I would have liked to see him face a proper trial because it seems highly likely that he’s done some foul and illegal things, and deserves the truth to be brought to light and to face the consequences.

But he didn’t face the justice he deserved. Barnes is right that his admission of guilt can’t be taken as evidence of anything because of the circumstances. It’s shameful that the Australian Government condoned his prolonged and illegal detention without trial. It also connived in a solution to the increasing political problem of Hicks’ detention that minimised the political fallout and virtually guaranteed that the truth about Hicks would never be scrutinised independently.

In the process, they turned him, in the eyes of some, into the most unlikely hero.

Respect for the rule of law and for the rights even of scum like Hicks is supposed to be a point of differentiation between the world he wants to impose, and the one we want to keep.

PART I from White Warlock

"David Hicks, your country failed you - and that should never be forgotten"

Exactly Mr Barns. One must put a situation into proper context before they make a judgment. David Hicks went to a number of war zones and volunteered to fight for Muslim armies.

He was in Afghanistan hanging out with the Taliban (who make the image of a white KKK look like a left-wing hippy) before 911 and then after 911, otherwise, how was he found on the battlefield with the Taliban when the US army went to the country after 911. This fact is not disputed, he enjoyed the company of the Taliban like good old buddies, and David's own father was worried that he was "with the enenmy" (his dad's own words).

If we applied the standards of evidence we use in a domestic Western crime investigation in all the major wars the West has fought from WWII back to WWI, then how could we ever have destroyed the Nazis or the Imperialist Japanese, if every soldier caught in battle needed a full court case with witnesses, crime scene evidence, etc. It is ludicrous. It is a war, the enemy in this case (Taliban, al Qaeda) are genocidal, racist, mysoginistic to the point of the enslavement of the female gender, megalomaniacs, bloodthirsty killers.

You should drop the guise of pretending to be standing up for the man's rights, when in fact, it is obvious that you believe the man and all other Muslim extremists are freedom fighters. For a start, this is clear because no-one like you came to the defense of Pauline Hanson when she was jailed for "electoral fraud".

And about the "freedom fighters" bit: freedom fighters fight for freedom as a general thing, they don't fight so they can enslave women or Christians or Jews. These Muslim extremists are more like deposed kings who, screaming like spoiled little brats, want to rule the world as a glorious empire. Empires have to "EARN" such glory, but they want it the easy way.

I agree with Greg. David never got to Kosovo but he was trying to join the NATO forces to stop the genocide of 8,000 young muslim men and boys by Milosevic. In case the right wing ranters who love killing muslims have forgotten, Milosevic died while on trial for genocide.

Bin Laden was recruited by Jimmy Carter and was much loved by Reagan as he fought to get the Russians out of Afghanistan, after Carter backed the mujihadeen with $500 million 6 months before Russia invaded so that Russia could have their own Vietnam.

Let us not forget that while the US walked away from Afghanistan in 1989 they still used the mujihadeen for their own purposes, they spawned the ISI in Pakistan as a branch of the CIA for covert operations in the region - ably supported by the lovely Benazir Bhutto as early as 1993 - and were feting the Taliban as late as July 2001 in the hope of getting a gas and oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea.

So Hicks was being armed, trained and funded by the US everywhere he went.

And he did only agree so he could get out of the hell that others have been stuck in for years without hope of ever getting out.

A bit like some thousands of innocent refugees we locked up without trial or charge.

I would not presume to judge this matter until all the facts are in, and they're not.

Hicks, as part of the deal made for his release is unable to tell us his side of the story, yet. Perhaps he never will.
But,as the saying goes, "There's always two sides to every coin..."
We've only heard an extremely biased one side.

As another poster has pointed out - the fact remains - an Australian Citizen was not given the protection by his government that he was entitled to. And in this very real way, his government did let him, and his family down. Hicks did not receive a fair trial - nor fair treatment according to his rights as an Australian citizen. His
government did not come to his aid.

That should be of concern to us all.

To those on this Forum - who claim that Hicks was a terrorist, and got what he deserved, et cetera, I say wait until you know all the facts. Then decide. But, stop labelling other posters who happen to think differently to you. That's neither fair or intelligent. When you stoop to insulting people, you've automatically lost a civilized debate. And after all isn't that what this forum is supposed to be about - "An intelligent debate on political and social issues?"