Australian At Gitmo Said To Be Sane

Australia's sole remaining inmate at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is not mentally ill, the foreign minister said Thursday, contradicting reports from the detainee's lawyer.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the inmate, David Hicks, had met recently with an unidentified foreign citizen, who said the 31-year-old was in good health.

"There was no suggestion that he was suffering from mental illness, though no doubt he doesn't like being in Guantanamo Bay," Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio from New York, where he is promoting Australia's tourism industry.

Downer refused to give any more information about the visit, saying only that the person who saw Hicks was from another country and that Hicks had agreed to the meeting.

Hicks' Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori, has repeatedly said his client is suffering from severe depression as a result of his extended incarceration without trial at the U.S. military base.

Concerns about Hicks' mental state deepened when he refused to accept a phone call from his father, Terry, late last year — a contact that took months to organize.

Terry Hicks said the government had provided no further details about who met with his son.

"We want to know who it was, and whether they had a capacity to make a proper assessment," he said. "If they say David is fit enough and there is no mental problems, then where is the assessment made by an independent psychiatrist?"

Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner from southern Australia, was captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance during the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 and transferred to Guantanamo in January 2002.

He was originally charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit war crimes and aiding the enemy, and was selected to face a U.S. military tribunal. But his case was thrown into limbo when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the tribunals illegal in June.

Australian officials say they have received assurances that Hicks will be among the first to be charged and tried under a revised military tribunal system approved by the U.S. Congress last year.