Australian lawmakers ask U.S. for Hicks release( Pelosi)

Australian lawmakers have written to their U.S. counterparts calling for Australia's only Guantanamo Bay inmate to be sent home for trial, saying new rules set up to try detainees "stomped on basic American values". Almost 100 lawmakers, all from centre-left opposition and minor parties apart from a sole government senator, wrote to the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, on Friday, calling for David Hicks to face trial in Australia.

"We are not satisfied that the recently announced rules for Guantanamo Bay detainee trials will afford David Hicks, or other detainees, a fair hearing, consistent with international legal standards and Australian law," the letter said.

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Article 110 of the Geneva Convention protecting prisoners of war entitled Hicks to immediate repatriation to Australia to face trial before a proper court, they said.

"We ask you and your colleagues to insist, perhaps by way of resolution in the Congress, that David Hicks be immediately repatriated to Australia," the letter said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD100983.htm

February 1, 2007 - 6:04AM

The five years that David Hicks has spent in detention at Guantanamo Bay will not be automatically deducted from any sentence handed down, chief US military prosecutor Colonel Moe Davis says.

Attorney General Philip Ruddock has pressed the US to uphold the basic western principle of deducting the period spent in custody, while awaiting trial, from any sentence received.

Col Davis said there was no provision in the military commission rules guaranteeing that a period in remand would be considered during sentencing, The Sydney Morning Herald reports ...

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Hicks-sentence-reduction-at-risk/2007/02/01/1169919432403.html