UK lawyers threaten citizenship legal action

Hell Yes, maybe they can do something. Frikin Howard certainly hasn't, at least he stands a chance to be heard, to find out if he is guilty of anything.

By Phillip Coorey
October 07, 2005

BRITISH lawyers acting for David Hicks have threatened legal action to force their Government to grant the Australian British citizenship.

They have written to the Home Office giving it a week to make a decision or face legal action.
South Australian Hicks is entitled to British citizenship as his mother is British. He has sought the status to get out of the US-run prison camp at Guantanamo Bay where he has been held for almost four years.

Hicks, 30, has been charged with three terror offences and faces trial by a U.S. military commission.

If he received British citizenship, he would want the British Government to secure his release, as it did for the nine Britons in the camp because it felt the military commissions were unfair.

His Adelaide lawyer David McLeod said yesterday although the British Government had no discretionary powers to refuse Hicks citizenship, it could grant it and then revoke it.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide next week if it will hear an appeal by one of Hicks' co-accused, Salim Hamdan, who has challenged the legitimacy of the military commissions. Hamdan won his case in the Federal Court. That was overturned by the Appeals Court.

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