Fischer compares Hicks to Morant By Brian Woodley January 25, 2002 ONE hundred years after the firing squad of a foreign military power controversially executed two Australian soldiers, another Australian awaits an uncertain fate in a faraway military jail and the comparisons are flowing. Former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer sees "an almost eerie parallel" between suspected al-Qa'ida fighter David Hicks and ill-fated Boer War lieutenants Harry "The Breaker" Morant and Peter Handcock. "Once again an Australian is under the military justice of a foreign country . . . and faces a life-or-death outcome," he told The Australian yesterday. Mr Fischer said the comparison was "almost" eerie because, unlike Morant and Handcock, who fought for Australia but were tried for shooting Boer prisoners out of hand, Mr Hicks was allegedly caught fighting for the enemy. Geoffrey Robertson, a barrister specialising in human rights law, says Mr Hicks, like Morant and Handcock, risks becoming the victim of a miscarriage of justice under unsafe military laws. He believes Mr Hicks should be deemed a prisoner of war, placed under the protection of the Geneva Conventions and tried by a UN court. Mr Hicks, captured in Afghanistan last month, is being held as a "battlefield detainee" in a custom-built prison at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The US says Mr Hicks and fellow detainees could be tried by US military tribunals with the power to order executions. The Australian Government has raised no objection to the US dealing with Mr Hicks. According to Nick Bleszynski, author of a new book on Morant for which Mr Fischer has written a foreword: "The then prime minister, Edmund Barton, kowtowed to the British over the shooting of Morant and Handcock and it seems John Howard is about to do the same to America over Hicks." Mr Fischer will today present Bleszynski's book, Shoot Straight, You Bastards! to South Australian Governor Marjorie Jackson to mark the 102nd anniversary of Morant's departure from Port Adelaide for South Africa. Published by Random House, the book will be in stores from next week to coincide with the February 27 centenary of the Morant and Handcock executions.
