Australian Held at Gitmo Wins Appeal

Australian David Hicks, who spent five years at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, said he wants the government to pay for the “five-and-a-half years of physical and psychological torture” after a U.S. military appeals court threw out his conviction on a terrorism charge Wednesday. “I do think that someone should be responsible for my medical expenses,” Hicks said in Sydney on Thursday. Hicks pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing material support to terrorism, but his conviction was overturned because the act was not recognized as a crime until years after he was captured in Afghanistan. Hicks acknowledged he had trained at an al Qaeda camp and met Osama bin Laden. Hicks’s lawyers have said he was innocent and pleaded guilty under duress after years of torture. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott declined to apologize on behalf of the Australian government.