Australian captives in Guantanamo
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The United States Department of Defense acknowledges holding two Australian captives in Guantanamo.[1] A total of 778 captives have been held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba since the camps opened on January 11, 2002 The camp population peaked in 2004 at approximately 660. Only nineteen new captives, all "high value detainees" have been transferred there since the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul v. Bush. As of January 2008 the camp population stand at approximately 285.
The two Australians were Mamdouh Habib, who had been sent to Egypt, prior to his detention in Guantanamo, and was repatriated in 2006; and David Hicks, who faced charges before a Guantanamo military commission, pled guilty in a plea bargain in March 2007, and received a nine month sentence, which he was allowed to serve in Australia.
