They walked off into the Taliban camp

An Australian caught among Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan was nicknamed “Indiana Jones” by his father as he moved from job to job seeking adventure before turning to Islam two years ago. Terry Hicks said his son David, 26, spoke to him by satellite telephone two weeks after the September 11 attacks in the United States and told him he had joined the Taliban. Hicks is the second Westerner this month to be caught with pro-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, after American John Walker, 20, another Islam convert, was captured two weeks ago by Northern Alliance forces and handed over to the U.S. authorities. “All I know is he was fighting for the Taliban and he said he was off to Kabul to defend Kabul...That’s when I picked myself up from the floor,” Hicks told the Herald Sun newspaper on Thursday. “He’s been a handful, a rebel, but not a troublemaker. He’s got a bit of hot blood running through his veins... We call him Indiana Jones. That’s his nickname.” The Australian government said on Wednesday an Australian who trained with al-Qaida had been captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan on or around December 9 and released his identity on Thursday in response to repeated questions from reporters. “We can confirm that the man captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan is David Hicks, formerly of Adelaide,” a spokeswoman for Attorney General Daryl Williams told Reuters. The fate of both Hicks and Walker remained unclear with the Australian government investigating possible charges that could be laid against Hicks, who had no criminal record and was unknown to security agencies until this week. Australia’s opposition leader Simon Crean said the government should seek immediate consular access to ensure Hicks is brought home instead of being handed over to U.S. authorities seeking justice for the September 11 airline attacks believed to have been masterminded by bin Laden. “It should be doing it on the basis of bringing Mr Hicks here to Australia to face the appropriate justice,” he told reporters. U.S. officials have yet to decide how to handle Walker, now being held at a U.S. marine base at a desert airstrip in southern Afghanistan. He could be charged with treason. Both Hicks and Walker were raised in middle class suburbia and veered out of the mainstream as teenagers - but there the similarities end. Walker’s conversion from Catholicism to Islam at the age of 16 led him to Afghanistan. He never looked back after heading to Yemen to study Arabic, funded by his parents, and then to Pakistan for religious education, adopting the name Abdul Hamid. Hicks, however, is better described as a rebel looking for a cause after dropping out of school at the age of 14. He moved into the outback to work as a farmhand on cattle properties where he married an Aboriginal woman. The couple had two children - now aged nine and seven - but they broke up. After a year in Japan working as a horse trainer, he returned to Adelaide and decided that the people of Kosovo were oppressed. He set off for Europe in mid-1999 where, according to the Australian government, he joined the Kosovo Liberation Front. It was in Kosovo that it was believed he first encountered Islam. After a brief stint back in Adelaide to study at an Islamic college, he converted to Islam, adopting the name Mohammed Dawood. He worked at removing the bones from chickens to support himself. The president of the Islamic Society of South Australia, Wali Hanifi, said Hicks attended an Adelaide mosque in 1999 after returning from Kosovo. “He came across Islam and came to believe this is the true faith,” Hanifi said. “He was a young man who was interested in spiritual fulfilment, who might have got mixed up with the wrong crowd.” The Australian government said Hicks moved to Pakistan in November 1999 and trained with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of dozens of Islamic groups fighting to wrest control of Muslim-majority Kashmir from India. He moved to Afghanistan in 2000 and trained with bin Laden’s network. “The idea that he’s high up in the al-Qaida network is rubbish,” Terry Hicks told Australian newspapers. “We don’t support him on the fact he was fighting but I support him as my son. I just hope he survives... I’d like to see him again. I still love him.” CBS News