Give Hicks a fair go, says ex-G-G

FORMER Governor-General Bill Hayden accuses the Howard Government of being a servile accomplice to the US's inhumane treatment of Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.

Adelaide-born Hicks, who turned 31 today, has been detained since shortly after he was captured allegedly fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.

Mr Hayden said today the circumstances of Hicks' detention were intolerable "to any person who faithfully embraces the rule of law as the keystone of a free, democratic society".

"In so many important respects those principles have been crudely violated by the US administration while the Australian government has been a servile accomplice to this shoddy conduct," Mr Hayden wrote in an article for today's Courier Mail newspaper.

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