He is a cocky guy and he talks about killing Americans
The Age
By GAY ALCORN
UNITED STATES CORRESPONDENT
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA
Monday 28 January 2002
There are 158 alleged Taliban leaders and al Qaeda fighters on this American naval outpost in Cuba, and none provokes more consternation than David Hicks, 26, the Australian captured in Afghanistan in December.
"He's a hothead," said Lieutenant-Colonel Bernie Liswell, who oversees daily security at Camp X-Ray, America's terrorist prison beside the blue-green Caribbean Sea.
"He's a cocky guy and he talks about killing Americans."
Colonel Liswell won't even talk to Hicks because he's such a trouble maker, yelling at and abusing guards. Hicks is a "born-again Muslim", Colonel Liswell says with a roll of his eyes.
Is Hicks one of the captives whom the Commander of the Joint Task Force on Guantanamo Bay, Brigadier-General Mike Lehnert, calls "emerging leaders", those trying to communicate by writing notes on concrete floors with rocks, and trying to send messages during prayer times?
"He tries to (be a leader) but I don't think anybody's picking up on it," Colonel Liswell said.
Adelaide-born Hicks was the one who threatened death to Americans soon after he arrived from Kandahar on January 11, it was revealed on the weekend. Twenty visiting members of Congress peered at him in his prison cage and "practised our evil eye on him", said Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Hicks apparently ignored them.
It was Hicks, says a soldier, who, when loaded on to a US plane bound for Cuba, responded when told he was leaving the control of the US Army: "It's about bloody time." Hicks, wearing blackened goggles, was unaware of his destination or his new custodians.
The retort came back: "You're now in the control of the US Marines."
Hicks is a minor celebrity in the United States, one of the few captives with an individual identity, and one of the few whose insults his American guards can understand.
There are 25 nationalities at Camp X-Ray, including British, French, a Swede, a Belgian, Saudis and Yemenis. Almost all are of Middle Eastern or Arabic descent.
Their treatment by the US as "unlawful combatants" instead of prisoners of war covered under the Geneva Convention has been the subject of increasing criticism.
This has spread as far as the White House cabinet, with Secretary of State Colin Powell asking President Bush to reconsider and declare that the US is bound by the Geneva Convention in its treatment of the captives.
This is strongly opposed by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is bringing journalists to Guantanamo Bay today on a whirlwind public relations tour of the camp. Guards expect that the prisoners who speak English - Hicks among them - will take the opportunity to tell Mr Rumsfeld exactly what they think.