On the second day of military court proceedings against four detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Australian David Hicks has been charged with war crimes.
The 29-year-old former ranch hand and kangaroo hunter was charged with conspiracy to attack civilians and civilian targets, attempted murder and aiding the enemy by fighting alongside the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was deposed in 2001.
The four men - an Australian, two Yemenis and a Sudanese - are the first detainees at Guantanamo to appear before the military commissions whose creation was ordered by US President George W Bush.
Yesterday, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from Yemen and a former driver for Osama bin Laden, was formally charged with conspiracy to commit murder as an al-Qaeda member.
