AUSTRALIA:A leading Australian republican who overcame his distaste for monarchy to appeal to Queen Elizabeth in the case of a man being held at Guantánamo Bay has now sought intervention by the Pope and Nelson Mandela.
Australian David Hicks (31) has been incarcerated at the US facility in Cuba for five years. He is in legal limbo as no charges against him exist. The Australian government has refused to request his transfer to his homeland.
The queen was asked to intercede in the case by Barry Everingham, a Melbourne journalist and campaigner. He wrote to her on December 12th, and recently received a reply.
"She said she wouldn't intervene, but told me she has directed my letter to Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary," Mr Everingham said. "I think that there is a political statement there. The queen can't comment herself, but the fact that she has sent the request to Ms Beckett is Buckingham Palace shorthand that something should be done."
Emboldened, Mr Everingham has now written to Pope Benedict and Mr Mandela with the same plea.
The Hicks issue has been gathering steam in Australia, especially after the fifth anniversary of his detention last month. From having been a small cause espoused by civil rights activists, there is now a wide range of people, both prominent and ordinary citizens, calling on the prime minister, John Howard, to get Hicks out of Guantánamo.
It is shaping up as a significant issue in an election year.
Kevin Rudd, the new leader of the opposition Labor Party, is the latest to join, saying he would at least request Hicks's transfer to stand trial in a civilian court.
Green Party senator Bob Brown said: "People right across the political spectrum are outraged by what's happening to Hicks and by the failure of John Howard to pick up the phone to George Bush to bring an end to this obscene spectacle."
In his letter to the queen, Mr Everingham wrote: "David has been ignored . . . and the prime minister has abandoned an Australian citizen to a fate surely worse than death. Is there something you, Australian head of state, can do to address this grievous wrong?"
The irony is that Mr Everingham has been a vocal campaigner for Australia to end its status as a constitutional monarchy and become an independent republic.
A national referendum to convert to a republic was narrowly defeated in 1999.
Mr Howard, from the conservative Liberal Party, is a staunch defender of the status quo.
The US Supreme Court ruled last June that the military commissions to try Guantánamo Bay detainees were unlawful. Most western countries have had their citizens transferred from the notorious facility, but Mr Howard's government has taken no action.
Charges against Hicks of conspiracy, aiding the enemy and attempted murder were dropped. The US authorities have been promising that fresh charges would be laid but nothing has happened, leaving him in a legal limbo.
Hicks's American lawyer, Maj Michael Mori of the marines, said yesterday that if Hicks were tried in a US federal court, he would face a maximum of 15 years, but under the present situation his detention is indefinite.
Maj Mori claims that US authorities and the Australian government have shifted position on whether Hicks broke a federal law.
"Either Hicks did not violate US law or there was an intentional decision to deprive Hicks of a US federal criminal trial where he would have had the same legal protections as a US citizen."
Mr Hicks was captured from the Taliban in Afghanistan in December 2001. The only Australian in Guantánamo, his supporters say he is a simple person who is no danger to the US.
The conditions in which he is being held are also controversial. He is in solitary confinement and frequently shackled to the floor.
Terry Hicks, David's father, yesterday called for an independent inquiry into his son's claims that he was sexually assaulted by his captors in Afghanistan.
A US witness report just released has described a similar assault at the same facility where Hicks was held before his transfer to Cuba.
Today's Melbourne Age reported that the account, released under freedom-of- information laws, describes an incident in February 2002 in which a prisoner was allegedly anally assaulted by military police at the US joint interrogation facility at Kandahar.