Arbiter Online

WORLD

Detainee will return to Australia to serve his nine-month sentence

Australian David Hicks, the first person to face U.S. war crimes charges since World War II, was sentenced to nine months in prison Friday after five years of confinement at the American prison camp for suspected terrorists.

A panel of military officers had sentenced Hicks to seven years in prison on a charge of providing material support to a terrorist organization, which he pleaded guilty to in a morning hearing.

But after the panel left, the colonel in charge of the proceedings revealed that, in exchange for Hicks’ guilty plea, the sentence had been reduced to nine months.

The U.S. and Australia already have agreed that Hicks will serve his prison time in Australia. Under the terms of his plea, Hicks will be allowed to leave Guantanamo within 60 days, meaning he’ll be home by June and free by New Year’s Eve.

Under the plea deal, Hicks agreed not to talk to reporters for a year, to forever waive any profit from telling his story, to renounce any claims of mistreatment or unlawful detention and to submit voluntarily to U.S. interrogation and testify at future U.S. trials or international tribunals.

The agreement drew criticism from civil liberties and human rights attorneys monitoring the trial. They were especially critical of the order forbidding Hicks from protesting any mistreatment, saying such a requirement would be unconstitutional in a civilian U.S. court.

“If the United States were not ashamed of its conduct, it wouldn’t hide behind a gag order,” said Ben Wizner, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The agreement says he wasn’t mistreated. Why aren’t we allowed to judge for ourselves?”

Eight senior U.S. military officers were brought to this remote U.S. Navy base to pass sentence, which they returned in less than two hours. The prosecution had asked for seven years, the defense 20 months.

“His heart wasn’t with al-Qaida,” said Marine Maj. Dan Mori, Hicks’ Pentagon-appointed attorney. He cast Hicks as a “wannabe” soldier who as a high-school dropout was rebuffed by a bid to enlist in the Australian army.

Countered Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail, the case prosecutor, in urging the maximum seven years: “Other confused, lost souls might follow in his footsteps.”

Besides, said Chenail, Hicks willingly rejoined Osama bin Laden’s forces a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “He knew America was coming after al-Qaida; he wanted to help them out.”

The short, stocky, one-time kangaroo skinner turned soldier of fortune attended Friday’s hearings in a charcoal suit and tie, with a styled haircut, a stark contrast to the prison uniform, flip-flops and straggly shoulder-length hair he sported at his first hearing on Monday.

During the morning hearing where he entered his plea, Hicks admitted to a 35-point narrative that he’d taken four training courses with al-Qaida before the Sept. 11 attacks and that he’d asked bin Laden why he offered no training manuals.

He also admitted to standing guard with an AK-47 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, first at Kandahar Airport and later beside a Taliban tank. He said he was engaged in two hours of combat with U.S. proxy Northern Alliance troops, but didn’t admit to ever firing a shot.

Not in his final agreement were some of the most explosive charges that had initially been drawn against him: that he had discussed going on a suicide mission with a senior al Qaida leader, that he’d met the so-called shoe-bomber Richard Reid and that he fought in the same unit as John Walker Lindh, an American captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and now serving time in a federal prison for his actions.

NATIONAL

Industry tries new ways to fight global warming

Sometime this summer, a huge coal-fired power plant near the shore of Lake Michigan will try a new process to capture carbon dioxide (CO2), a powerful greenhouse gas that gushes from its smokestack.

The experiment at the We Energies plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., is among a batch of technologies aimed at slowing the rising tide of CO2 in the atmosphere, which scientists have concluded is a leading cause of global warming.

Half the electricity generated in the United States comes from burning coal, America’s most plentiful and cheapest energy source. Unfortunately, burning coal is also a major producer of carbon dioxide, releasing an estimated 1.5 billion tons of the heat-trapping gas every year.

Experts think that much of the buildup can be avoided if CO2 is captured at power plants and stored underground or under the ocean for hundreds, even thousands, of years.

This process, known as “Carbon Capture and Sequestration,” is one of the hottest fronts in the battle against global warming.

“Carbon capture and storage is central to the future of coal in the United States and our future energy policy,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at a hearing March 22.

“It won’t be cheap or easy,” cautioned Bryan Hannegan, a vice president at the Electric Power Research Institute, a power industry organization based in Palo Alto, Calif. “It will require billions (and) a potentially large hike in consumers’ electric bills.”

Many technical problems remain to be solved. The Department of Energy estimates that it may be at least 2020 before carbon capture and sequestration will be economically competitive with existing plants.

The $11 million Pleasant Prairie carbon-capture pilot experiment is a joint project of EPRI and Alstom, a French manufacturer of power equipment.

The Alstom system uses chilled ammonia, a common solvent, to separate carbon dioxide from other flue gases created in the power plant. It works somewhat like the way a catalytic converter removes toxic gases in an automobile engine.

If the Wisconsin experiment succeeds, American Electric Power, a giant utility company based in Columbus, Ohio, will apply it in a much larger, $80 million demonstration project at its Mountaineer plant in New Haven, W.Va., starting in mid-2008. Up to 100,000 tons a year of CO2 captured there will be stored 9,000 feet below the ground in a nearby saltwater aquifer.

And if the West Virginia operation goes well, American Electric Power plans to open a $300 million commercial-scale carbon-capture plant in 2011 at its Northeastern Station in Oologah, Okla. That system is expected to collect 1.5 million tons of CO2 a year. The gas will be pumped into existing oil wells to raise the pressure and drive out more oil.

American Electric Power chose the chilled ammonia system because it’s more efficient and costs less than other technologies, company spokesman Barry McNulty said. In EPRI’s laboratory tests, the process removed up to 90 percent of the carbon dioxide and required a third as much energy as other technologies, he said.

EPRI estimates that the United States has enough underground storage capacity to hold several centuries’ worth of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants.

The rising interest in carbon capture and storage is a response to mounting public awareness and concern about global warming.

The Democratic-controlled Congress is showing new interest in legislation promoting or requiring CO2 reductions. Former Vice President Al Gore told Congress recently that it should “freeze” carbon emissions immediately.

LOCAL / BSU

Legislature vetoes Gov. Otter’s ban of smoking

The House and Senate voted Wednesday to override Otter’s veto of a ban on smoking in bowling alleys.

With the House’s and Senate’s actions, the ban on smoking in bowling alleys will become law.

The House bowling alley bill was sponsored by Caldwell Rep. Bob Ring, who is resigning from the Legislature next month due to health issues.

With the overrides, the ban goes into effect this summer.

An override requires a 2/3 majority vote in both houses.

“It comes very natural to me to protect people, especially children, from unnecessary harm and injury,” Ring said in support of the veto override.

Ring is a retired obstetrician. He said bowling alleys are the only remaining public places where children are regularly exposed to cigarette smoke.

The smoking ban veto override passed the House 57-13 and the Senate 29-6. Nampa Rep. Robert Schaefer was the only Nampa or Caldwell House member to vote against the override.

Some House members questioned the state’s need to protect citizens able to make up their own minds about whether they would go to bowling alleys where smoking is allowed. And they pointed out that many bowling alleys already ban smoking.

“The folks that use bowling alleys have the choice of where they want to go,” Rep. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, said.

No consensus on grocery tax bill In other action Wednesday, Idahoans will have to wait until at least next year if they want relief from the state’s grocery tax.

The House voted Wednesday to override Gov. Butch Otter’s veto of a bill that would have raised the income tax credit for grocery tax for virtually all Idahoans. But the Senate sent the bill back to committee, effectively killing it for the session, which could end today.

Caldwell GOP Sen. John McGee said he thinks the Legislature can come up with a better grocery tax credit next year.

Sen. Brad Little, R-Emmett, said the Senate did not have enough votes to override Otter’s grocery tax veto and could not reach a consensus on what to do about grocery tax relief.

“We all wanted grocery tax (relief) and so did the governor,” Little said. “But it was a matter of (how to do it).”

A bill the governor proposed but the Legislature bypassed would have given lower-income Idahoans grocery tax credit to the tune of $90 per person. The House Bill supported by the Legislature would have raised the tax credit $20 per person for most Idahoans and $35 for seniors.

Before the Senate’s move Wednesday, the House passed an override of Otter’s grocery tax veto by a vote of 48-22.

Nampa Rep. Brent Crane said the tax cut was worth supporting.

“Does this bill provide grocery tax relief? Yes, it does,” Crane said. “Does it provide enough? In my opinion, no, it doesn’t. But this is a positive step in the right direction.”

Courtesy Idaho Press-Tribune

WHAT THE ?

Hey, leave Bob alone!

A man broke into the primate enclosure at the zoo in Chessington, England, to steal a Bolivian squirrel monkey named Sponge Bob.

But the nine other Bolivian squirrel monkeys in the cage did not take kindly to the kidnapping of their pal, and attacked the
interloper, jumping on his head and biting him, forcing him
to flee.

Article Tools