BRISBANE, Australia, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- An Australian lawyers convention has condemned the Canberra government's treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.
The Australian-born Hicks, a convert to Islam, was captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, where he allegedly was fighting with the Taliban. He has been held without trial ever since at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Australia has declined to request he be sent home for trial.
The annual convention of more than 2,000 members of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, meeting on Queensland's Gold Coast beach resort, unanimously passed a motion calling on the government to quickly get Hicks to trial or allow him to return to Australia.
A spokesman for the Alliance, Thomas Percy, said he hoped other branches and law societies around Australia would be passing similar motions "so that the government can be left under no misapprehension the legal fraternity is completely appalled at what the government is doing about David Hicks."
