Australian detainee David Hicks was flown back to Australia yesterday on a chartered jet.

He will serve 7 months in an Australian prison and then be freed.

The Australian Government says it will not enforce the ban on Hicks telling his story when his sentence ends in December -- he just won't be allowed to profit from it.

Australia was being mum on the details of the flight, no John Mark Karr moments disclosed of champagne and gourmet food -- but it did leak that the movie he watched was "The Departed."

This is really rich. Via Think Progress:

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whether any U.S. citizens are “being held today, for over a month, who have been denied habeas corpus or access to an attorney.” Instead of giving an answer, Gonzales replied, “[Y]ou’re asking me a question I hadn’t really thought about.”

Sherman then followed up and asked whether there any “U.S. citizens being held now by foreign governments or foreign organizations, without access to attorneys, as a result of rendition.” Gonzales again said, “It’s just — quite frankly, I hadn’t thought about this.”

TP has the video. Also, the ACLU is staying positive in the habeas reform battle. Mark your calendars now for June 26:

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The New York Times reports that many Guantanamo detainees are refusing to meet with or even accept mail from their own lawyers. They no longer trust them.

The detainees’ resistance appears to have been fueled by frustration over their long detention and suspicion about whether their lawyers are working for the government, as well as anti-American sentiment, some of the documents and interviews show. “Your role is to polish Bush’s shoes and make the picture look good,” a Yemeni detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, 31, wrote his lawyer in February.

Is the Government behind this? Many of the lawyers think so.

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The Supreme Court today refused to hear the cases of Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr, challenging the legality of the military tribunals under which they are to be tried.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would have granted the request to hear the case, the court said in turning it down. It takes four votes, though, to hear a case.

The court's action follows its April 2 decision not to step into related aspects of the legal battle regarding other Guantanamo Bay detainees. The issue there is whether the prisoners may go to federal court to challenge their confinement.

The torture case charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonazales, George Tenet and others have been dropped, at the request of the prosecutor.

In her decision, German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms argued that the case does not confront crimes committed on German soil, nor involve victims or perpetrators with ties to Germany. Harms also stated that the investigation does not have a reasonable chance of succeeding.

The case was filed in Germany because of the country's obligation under the German law of universal jurisdiction to try cases that deal with torture and other serious crimes, regardless of where the crime took place or what the nationality of the victims or perpetrators.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case, says:

"Fundamentally, this is a political and not a legal decision," said CCR President Michael Ratner. "We will continue to pursue Rumsfeld, (U.S. Attorney General Alberto) Gonzales, and the others in the future -- they should not feel they can travel outside the United States without risk. Our goal is no safe haven for torturers."

The case may be refiled in Spain.

Not content to seek to deprive the Guantanamo detainees of habeas corpus and access to the federal courts to challenge the conditions of their confinement, the Bush Administration is taking it one step further. Now, it wants to limit the detainees' access to their lawyers.

Saying that visits by civilian lawyers and attorney-client mail have caused “intractable problems and threats to security at Guantánamo,” a Justice Department filing proposes new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases that would replace more expansive rules that have governed them since they began visiting Guantánamo detainees in large numbers in 2004.

What limits does the Administration want to impose? Read on...

Omar Khadr was a 15 year old Canadian, captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. You can read the details here.

The Pentagon today officially charged him with murder.

Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Delta soldier Sgt. Christopher Speer during a firefight in Afghanistan July 27, 2002.

He was 15 at the time and was held for three months in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he remains today. In addition to the charge of murder, Khadr will also stand trial on attempted murder, providing material support for terrorism, conspiracy and spying.

Omar should not be tried by military tribunal. As Human Rights Watch said,

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Image from BBC news.

The hunger strike at Guantanamo has resumed.

Force-feeding is painful.

The military's rationale for force-feeding?

"Because our policy is to preserve life."

Then why won't it take the death penalty off the table?

Another blast from the past: A special report by the Guardian on the mistreatment of detainees.

Jeralyn posted about the NYTimes editorial calling on Senate Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi to work to repeal the travesty that is the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

What the Times does not talk about is the fact that Bush will veto any such bill, assuming their are the necessary votes to pass a repeal and overcome a GOP filibuster.

I like this exercise because, as you may know, I support the Reid-Feingold "not funding" the Iraq Debacle bill. I am always asked, where are the votes? What about the filibuster? What about the veto? My response is always the same - filibusters and vetoes do not fund the Iraq Debacle. Do not flinch when the time comes (in the Reid-Feingold bill, the time is March 31, 2008.) Does the same strategy apply for Gitmo? It could. I think there are other avenues for closing Gitmo and restoring the rule of law on enemy combatants and habeas. I n short, to stop the Iraq Debacle, there are no other options. To stop Gitmo, there are imo.

The New York Times in an editorial today calls on Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to take action against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, both of which limit appeal rights of detainees.

Both violate the Constitution, and the court should strike down the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which limits avenues for appeal. But Congress approved the military commissions, left in place the combatant status review tribunals and suspended habeas corpus. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have a moral obligation to lead the way to righting these wrongs.

Amnesty International released a new report today, "USA: Cruel and Inhuman -- Conditions of Isolation for Detainees in Guantanamo Bay."

More than 80% of the 385 detainees are held in isolation, "a reversal of earlier moves to ease conditions and allow more socializing among detainee." While some detainees are held in solitary confinement at Camp Echo and Camp 5, conditions are worst at Camp 6, which opened in December.

Detainees are reportedly confined for 22 hours a day to individual, enclosed, steel cells where they are almost completely cut off from human contact. The cells have no windows to the outside or access to natural light or fresh air. No activities are provided, and detainees are subjected to 24- hour lighting and constant observation by guards through the narrow windows in the cell doors. They exercise alone in a high-walled yard where little sunlight filters through; detainees are often only offered exercise at night and may not see daylight for days at a time.

Many of these detainees have been held for more than five years without charges.

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FBI and CIA Agents have been interrogating terror suspects in Ethiopian secret jails.

CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.

The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP.

The U.S. defends the interrogations.

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