Hicks lawyer seeks Australian’s return from Guantanamo subject to control order News
Hicks lawyer seeks Australian’s return from Guantanamo subject to control order

[JURIST] The lawyer for Australian Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee David Hicks [JURIST news archive; AI profile] is pushing the Australian government to ask the US for Hicks' return by Christmas, allowing him to be kept under a control order authorized by last year's anti-terror legislation [official backgrounder]. David McLeod, Hicks' lawyer in Adelaide, emphasized that Hicks has already served five years in a maximum-security prison without having been convicted. Speaking to a gathering of 80 people in front of the Adelaide Parliament House, McLeod said that a compromise was necessary to prevent Hicks from "rotting" in Guantanamo indefinitely.

In August, Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock [official profile] announced that the government would push for Hicks' return [JURIST report] if the United States did not pursue new charges against him and convene a military tribunal by November. Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, where he allegedly fought with the Taliban, and has been charged [PDF charge sheet] with conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. McLeod repeated other Australian lawyers' observations [JURIST report] that Hicks' mental and physical condition is declining after months of solitary confinement and sleep deprivation. Australia's ABC News has more. The Sydney Morning Herald has additional coverage.

THIS DAY @ LAW

President Johnson signed law against burning draft cards

On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States on October 15, 1965. The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld in 1968 by the US Supreme Court in US v. O'Brien.

Gdansk Agreement reached

On August 31, 1980, the communist government of Poland and labor leaders settled the Gdansk Agreement. The accord settled a summer of labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. With the Agreement, Poland became the first communist country to allow the creation of an independent labor union, which was called Solidarity. Solidarity then became the driving force that ended communism in Poland. Learn more about the history of Solidarity.