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Detention: David Hicks has been held since January 2002 at Guantanamo Bay

Detention: David Hicks has been held since January 2002 at Guantanamo Bay (Reuters)

Ruddock brushes aside criticism of Guantanamo courts

The Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says criticism of America's military justice system is based on historic rather than current concerns.

Australia's military bar head Captain Paul Willee has questioned whether Adelaide man David Hicks, who is being held in Guantanamo Bay, will get a fair trial when he faces terrorism charges.

Yesterday, the ABC obtained emails from two prosecutors with the US military commissions, saying the procedures are rigged and describing the cases being pursued as marginal.

The Pentagon has dismissed the claims.

Captain Willee says he has serious misgivings about the American military commissions and does not believe an internal investigation will resolve the situation.

Captain Willee's comments come after two former Guantanamo Bay prosecutors claimed the trials of the detainees there were rigged.

But Mr Ruddock says a US Appeals Board found the military process is lawful.

"These complaints, as they were made well before the military commission process was put in place and so a lot of the comments, must be seen as historic rather than current," he said.

Greens Senator Bob Brown says Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley have "sold out" Australia's justice system in favour of an inadequate American model.

Senator Brown says the Australian Crimes Act from 1978 has provisions that would apply to cases like those of David Hicks, who is accused of committing terror offences overseas.

Mr Howard says Hicks can not be tried in Australia, but Senator Brown says Hicks has a right to justice in his country of origin.

"The Australian Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition are selling out our legal system, our democratic system, our right to hear our citizens before our courts as they tug their forelock to the US administration and the US system," he said.

Captain Willee has called for the Hicks case to be transferred to a civilian or a military court.

"[I would like] a civilian or a military court marshal set up in accordance with the rules that the Americans use to try their own alleged miscreants, rather than some specialised process which cuts across even those military safeguards, or appears to do so, and if it doesn't, what is the point of having it," he said.




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The Prime Minister John Howard says he still believes David Hicks will get a fair trial despite claims from some US military prosecutors that the tribunals are rigged.

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