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Australia: Australian Government must use US Supreme Court ruling as springboard for action

1 July 2006, 07:28AM

Amnesty International Australia welcomes the decision overnight of the highest court in the United States of America which rejected the US military commissions as unfair as they contravene international law.

The decision is a triumph for the rule of law and sends a clear message to President Bush that he cannot act unilaterally to create a system of law from thin air.

The court ruling confirms what Amnesty International Australia and other human rights bodies have been saying all along - that is, that these commissions should never have been established as they did not meet international standards for fair trial.

Amnesty International Australia calls on the Australian Government to ensure that David Hicks gets an immediate fair trial or is released without delay from Guantánamo Bay.

David Hicks has been languishing for over 4-and-a-half years in unlawful detention in the US run facility in Cuba and his inhuman treatment should immediately cease.

Amnesty International also urges President Bush to treat the ruling in this landmark case as a spur to a major rethink of the full range of his administration's "war on terror" detention policies and practices whether in effect in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, Iraq or other undisclosed locations.

The US Supreme Court affirmed the applicability of fundamental protections under the Geneva Conventions and specifically trials under "regularly constituted courts affording all the judicial guarantees recognised as indispensable by 'civilised peoples'".

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