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Hicks 'remains a threat'
21/12/2007 14:16 - (SA)
Adelaide, Australia - Former Guantanamo terror prisoner David Hicks remains a threat, a magistrate said on Friday as he ordered restrictions on his movements after he is released from an Australian prison next week.
Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner who pleaded guilty to supporting al-Qaeda at a US military tribunal after being captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, will be subject to a midnight-to-dawn curfew and have to report to police three times a week under the order.
"I'm satisfied that coupled with the defendant's views expressed and his capability and training ... that the defendant is a risk of taking part in a terrorist act," Federal Magistrate Warren Donald said.
Hicks is due to be released on December 29 from the Yatala high security prison in the southern city of Adelaide, after completing a seven-year prison sentence struck after a plea deal with US authorities that resulted in him being returned home from Guantanamo.
The father of two was captured in December 2001 by the US-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban, and spent more than five years without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
A US military commission sitting in Guantanamo sentenced Hicks, a Muslim convert, in March to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended after he pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.
Under a plea bargain, Hicks was returned to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Hicks has admitted he attended al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan, and police prosecutors who sought the control order said evidence showed Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat, guerrilla warfare and advanced marksmanship from al-Qaeda and the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
On Thursday, police lawyer Andrew Berger quoted letters sent in 2001 by Hicks to his family in which he said he had met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden 20 times and described him as a "lovely brother".
Hicks's lawyers said he did not object to being the subject of a control order, but that he believed some of the conditions were too onerous.
Hicks's father, Terry, has said his son wants to forget about his recent past and get on with his life by enrolling in university.
- AP
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