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The American military tribunals set up to pass judgment on terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay lurched into life this week when David Hicks, the “Australian Taliban”, unexpectedly pleaded guilty. The Pentagon will be relieved that the tribunals have started to show results after five years of controversy over the status of “enemy combatants”, claims of torture, the admissibility of forced confessions and a Supreme Court ruling last year that halted an earlier version of the tribunals. Yet the Hicks case is hardly an impressive start for America's offshore justice. Critics say the 31-year-old Mr Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner and alleged al-Qaeda fighter, faces a “kangaroo court”. Two of his civilian lawyers were barred from the hearing on March 26th. His military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, has been threatened with prosecution for harshly criticising the tribunals.

The prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, said the defence lawyer may have breached military law that bans officers from using “contemptuous words” against the president or senior officials. Major Mori filed a counter-charge against the prosecution, saying it was trying to intimidate him. In the end the motion will not be heard because Mr Hicks, looking pale and bedraggled, admitted the charge of “providing material support for terrorism”. A charge of “attempted murder in violation of the laws of war” was dropped. As The Economist went to press, the tribunal was due to hear details of his plea and pass sentence, which Mr Hicks is expected to serve out in Australia. His father, Terry Hicks, said his son had had “five years of absolute hell” since being captured in Afghanistan and allegedly suffering beatings, rape and forced injections in American custody—accusations rejected by the Pentagon. The guilty plea was just “a way to get home”, said Mr Hicks's father.

Many in Australia regard Mr Hicks as more of a lost soul than a dangerous terrorist. Indeed, his charge sheet portrays him as little more than an al-Qaeda foot-soldier, and a poor one at that. His jihadi CV is pitiful compared with the evidence being given by some of the 14 “high value detainees” belatedly brought to Guantánamo from CIA secret prisons in September. They include al-Qaeda's operational chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who in a closed hearing to determine whether he was an “enemy combatant” earlier this month boasted that he had organised the September 11th attacks “from A to Z”, and 30 other plots. Meanwhile, Ahmed Ghalfan Ghailani and Waleed bin Atttash, from Tanzania and Yemen respectively, have admitted supplying equipment for the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Many of these big names will face trial, and perhaps the death penalty. But the tribunals are expected to try only 60-80 of the more than 380 prisoners currently in Guantánamo. Over the years hundreds of detainees have been sent back to their countries, where some have been jailed and most have been released—and sometimes re-arrested. The Bush Administration says it wants to phase out and eventually close the jail. But it is unlikely to do so for some years, either because it lacks the evidence to prosecute detainees (even under the more lax military rules it is using), or because other countries are unwilling to take them back.

注（1）：本文选自Economist, 03/29/2007

注（2）：本文习题命题模仿对象为2004年真题Text 3（题目顺序稍微调整）。