Australian could face U.S. tribunal

WASHINGTON -- The Australian government says that one of its citizens imprisoned at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, will be charged by the United States this month and is expected to go before a military tribunal sometime in August.

A spokesman for the Australian Embassy here said on Tuesday that Prime Minister John Howard would discuss the issue of the prisoner, David Hicks, with President Bush in a visit to the White House this week.

Howard, in a statement over the weekend in Canberra, said he had been told that Hicks, who is accused of having fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, would be tried in August. Matt Francis, the embassy spokesman, also said that the Australian government had been informed that if Hicks was convicted and sentenced to a jail term, he would probably be able to serve his time in an Australian jail.

If Hicks, one of the 594 people now held at Guantanamo, goes to trial this summer, he could become the first person since just after World War II to face a U.S. military tribunal. Bush has designated six of the Guantanamo detainees, including Hicks, as eligible to be put before military commissions.

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