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Adelaide-born David Hicks has been incarcerated in the United States' notorious military prison at Guantanamo Bay for over 4 years. Unlike other countries such as Britain which have successfully negotiated the return of their nationals, the Australian Government has consistently refused to negotiate for a fair deal for Hicks, who now faces trial under the controversial military commision system. Hicks, who has a claim to British citizenship, achieved a victory on 12 April 2006 when the British Court of Appeals dismissed the UK Government's attempt to overturn his citizen's rights. In Adelaide on the same day a public meeting was organised by Fair Go for David, bringing together Hicks' legal counsels and his father to update the large audience on the progress of the campaign to bring him home. Read the legal updates at the public meeting Fair Go For David

#media_11687;left# The Bakhtiyari family are arguably the most high-profile and most vilified of asylum seekers to have been imprisoned for years under Australia's punitive system of mandatory detention. Ethnic Hazaras from Afghanistan, the family's cultural and national identity was challenged by the Federal Government, and used to cast doubt upon the family's credibility. The mainstream media were often complicit in the propaganda campaign against the Bakhtiyaris. Forcibly deported without proper travel documents to Pakistan in late 2004, the family now remain in a precarious position. Their case highlights fundamental problems in the system used for assessment of refugee status, including the government's wilful covering up of mistakes, by adding more lies and disinformation to already flawed information. One clear example of this is the process revealed by Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) member Giles Short in determining the case of Ali Bakhtiyari, who had originally been granted refugee status. Mr Short preferred to use 'evidence' gathered by Australian journalists from the Age and the Sun-Herald, over official letters from the Governor of the home province of the Bakhtiyaris.
Read more...
Making a Pakistani baby - the curious case of Mazhar Bakhtia...
Anomalies in 'translations' of Bakhtiari ID documents

On 4 February 2003 Australian man Stephen Sutton was arrested in a joint Australian Federal Police/Argentine police operation in Buenos Aires. After being held for two an a half years without charge, he was finally convicted of drug trafficking, and sentenced to 11 years in an Argentine prison. This conviction was despite ANY drugs being found on Stephen or in his hotel at the time of the raid. Moreover, when Stephen was 15 he had a rare type of scalp tumour removed, and according to his family 'was never the same ... and seemed to stay in this age bracket'. This fact alone suggests it is more likely that, if indeed there is ANY connection between Stephen Sutton and the drug trade, Stephen was exploited by unscrupulous others, tricked into being an unwitting drug mule in what has been described as a 'transnational organised crime syndicate'. Now Stephen Sutton is seriously ill in prison with tuberculosis, and being denied basic health care. His concerned family have been consistently fobbed off by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and even threatened with imprisonment themselves under the Privacy Act for discussing their own frustrations with the system. Stephen's older sister Ann Cluse, from Salisbury Downs discusses her experiences dealing with government bureaucracies that appear completely uninterested in offering basic protection to an Australian citizen abroad in dire trouble. Does being in prison mean you have lost all human rights? Are there are other Australians imprisoned overseas enduring similar neglect from Australian Consular agencies? Is this a systemic problem? Read more.... background to Stephen Sutton's situation Interview with Stephen Sutton's sister Stephen Sutton support website Letter from Stephen Sutton Photo caption: Stephen Sutton with his niece Dee, in Australia

As Australia’s uranium industry looks to expansion and the nuclear power debate ricochets around parliaments across the nation, Indigenous groups and environmental organisations concerned about the nuclear industry’s destructive impacts met in Quorn, in South Australia’s southern Flinders Ranges .