Australia warns against challenge of Hicks' sentence (1st Lead)

Mar 30, 2007, 22:39 GMT

Sydney - Any legal challenge to the prison sentence imposed on Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks may jeopardize the prisoner transfer deal under which the convicted terrorism supporter would return to Australia to serve the residue of his sentence, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Saturday.

Hicks, 31, admitted to training with al-Qaeda when he was formally convicted Friday of providing material support for terrorists.

'There's no point in having prisoner-transfer agreements if the Australian courts are just going to change the sentence when people are brought back,' Downer told national broadcaster ABC. 'It will undermine all our prisoner transfer treaties.'

Hicks will receive a maximum of seven years in jail under a plea deal agreed at a US military commission at the Guantanamo Bay base on Cuba.

The Australian government had secured a commitment from Washington that Hicks would not face the death sentence and could serve any remainder of his sentence back home in Australia. He has spent five years in Guantanamo.

A convert to Islam who was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001, Hicks is the first Guantanamo prisoner to have his case brought before the commissions set up to try terror suspects. Years of legal wrangling preceded the trial.

Military prosecutors alleged that Hicks attended al-Qaeda training sessions and travelled to Afghanistan from Pakistan after the September 11 attacks, to join the fight against the US-led coalition. They say he was issued a gun and ammunition at Kandahar airport and was ready to go into combat against US troops and their allies.

Hicks, whose alleged nicknames included Abu Muslim Australia, would have faced up to 20 years in prison if he had contested the charges and then been convicted.

On Sunday the military commission is expected to determine how long Hicks will have to serve in Australia.

Guantanamo holds about 385 detainees, including 14 high-level suspects transferred there last year after being held at secret CIA sites abroad.

His arraignment last week marked the resumption of tribunals after they were halted in 2004 over lawsuits filed in US courts challenging their legitimacy. The US Supreme Court ruled last summer that the tribunals could not continue unless President George W Bush got explicit authorization from Congress, which lawmakers approved late last year.