This young revolutionary was true to his word

The image of an armed, hooded terrorist, speaking with an apparent Australian accent from an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, sent shock waves through Australia last week. The message of the anonymous male, who seemed of Anglo-Celtic background, was unambiguous: "The honourable sons of Islam will not sit down watching you spread your evil and immorality and infidelity to our land."

Little wonder that the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, made the point that "there is a simple principle here and that is that these types of terrorists should not be able to return to the field of battle where they could once again take up arms against Australia or our allies". And little wonder that Kevin Rudd, Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, said he was sickened by the message of the al-Qaeda video.

So far there is little, if any, support for this still unidentified young Australian. Not so with David Hicks, the 30-year-old Australian who was arrested by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in late 2001, handed to United States forces and transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Hicks's cause has raised considerable sympathy in Australia - especially among lawyers, academics, journalists and the like.

To some extent support for Hicks in Australia arises from opposition to the process of the US military commission which will try him. The Howard Government has not been sympathetic to the accused but it has expressed understandable concern about the delay in the system. However, to some extent, Hicks's cause has been embraced by Australians who dislike George Bush's Administration and who believe that this case is an example of American abuse of power.

One influential commentator has declared publicly that Hicks was a "modest foot soldier for the Taliban"; another has said privately that he has been held long enough in detention.

The charge sheet with respect to the US v David Matthew Hicks has recently been released. The allegations are serious. By way of background, it is alleged Hicks trained with the Kosovo Liberation Army in Albania where he engaged in hostile action. He travelled to Pakistan where he joined the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation. Then Hicks went to Afghanistan where, it is claimed, he attended al-Qaeda terrorist training camps.

In testimony before a Senate committee on May 28, 2002, the former ASIO director-general, Dennis Richardson, said that "certainly Mr Hicks has received extensive al-Qaeda training". It is understood his training included such areas as weapons firing, landmines, marksmanship, ambush, intelligence, kidnapping techniques, assassination methods and surveillance. If the allegations are correct, this would mean that Hicks is one of the few Muslim converts of Anglo-Celtic background to train to such a high level with al-Qaeda.

The available evidence says Hicks left Afghanistan for Pakistan before al-Qaeda's attack on the US on September 11, 2001. It is alleged he returned to Afghanistan after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Hicks's supporters say he was fighting with the Taliban, not al-Qaeda, when he was arrested. Even if this is so, the Taliban regime was then providing training bases for al-Qaeda, which had effectively declared war on the US in particular and the West (including Australia) in general.

In other words, Hicks was no naive traveller in Muslim lands. At various times he made choices from which consequences flowed. This is evident from an impartial view of the documentary The President Versus David Hicks (directed by Curtis Levy and Bentley Dean) which aired on SBS TV last year. The message of the film was sympathetic to Hicks's cause, but the evidence in the documentary was damaging, nevertheless.

With Hicks's permission, the documentary quoted from some of his letters to his father, Terry. On February 14, 2000 David Hicks said "I am now officially a Taliban member" who would mix "learning" and "fighting". On August 10, 2000, he said that while fighting with Lashkar-e-Toiba, he "got to fire hundreds of rounds" into Indian-administered Kashmir. He also described himself as a "well-trained and practical soldier", and declared he was prepared for "martyrdom" since "the highest position in heaven" is reserved for those who "go fighting in the way of God against the Friends of Satan".

Hicks described the Taliban regime as "the best in the world" and praised the fact that the (then) leadership ran "the country by strict Islamic law" - including "the death sentence" and "all Islamic punishments".

In his letters to his father, Hicks advocated "an Islamic revolution" and maintained that if the Afghanistan experience was "spread throughout the Muslim world" then "the Western-Jewish domination is finished, so we live under Muslim rule again". The President Versus David Hicks also quoted from a poem written by the South Australian-born Islamic revolutionary in 1998: "Mohammed's food you shall be fed/To disagree, so off with your head."

It is easy to dismiss such words as the ravings of a juvenile foot soldier. But this is unfair to Hicks, who wanted to be taken seriously as a revolutionary, so much so that in letters to his father, Hicks made clear he is opposed to "so-called Muslim countries" which do not follow the precepts of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. All societies, Western and non-Western alike, should take gun-toting revolutionaries at their word.