The Pentagon has rushed to establish a military commission to try David Hicks - despite a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that lawyers predict will lead to the overturning of the military process as unfair.

The announcement came on Tuesday, a day after the historic decision by the US Supreme Court to grant the detainees the right to challenge their detention in an American court for the first time.

The Pentagon is insisting that the military commissions can still go ahead despite the Supreme Court's decision. It announced that Hicks, along with one Yemeni and one Sudanese national, would be tried by a military commission headed by retired army colonel Peter Brownback, a former military judge.

As one US defence lawyer put it, by announcing that the military commission for Hicks would go ahead, Pentagon officials "are trying to create the perception that they have everything under control at Guantanamo - when they have just gotten a huge black eye".

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday Australia was satisfied with the structure of the military commission Hicks will face but the US had taken too long to put him and other detainees on trial.

"I'm sorry that it's taken the Americans so long to set up the military commission," he said.

http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/30/1088488025912.html