Australia awaits its convicted al-Qaeda soldier (2nd Roundup)

Mar 31, 2007, 8:39 GMT

David Hicks, an Australian who has admitted he trained with al-Qaeda, was formally convicted Friday of material support for terrorists, news reports said. EPA/FAIR GO FOR DAVID / HANDOUT

Washington/Sydney - Australia will not commute the nine- month sentence a Guantanamo Bay military tribunal handed convicted al-Qaeda supporter David Hicks, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Saturday.

'He wasn't somebody who just happened to be backpacking through Afghanistan and unfortunately got tied up with al-Qaeda,' Downer told national broadcaster ABC. 'He's somebody who quite deliberately went out there and became involved in these organizations.'

Hicks pleaded guilty at a US military commission Friday to providing material support for a terrorist organization and was given a seven-year sentence.

The 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner, a Guantantamo inmate for more than five years, will have to serve only nine months of that sentence - less even than what his defence counsel had been seeking.

The reduction was part of a complicated set of agreements made when Hicks entered his original guilty plea on Monday under a pre- trial arrangement, the US Department of Defence said.

'As part of the pretrial agreement, Hicks admitted to 35 facts that supported the charge,' the statement said. 'These facts included training at multiple al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and joining fighters at Kandahar Airport and frontline forces in Konduz after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.'

Hicks had to affirm that he 'has never been illegally treated by anyone while in US custody,' the statement said, in apparent reference to charges by civil rights advocates and others connected to the case that he was mistreated and sodomized.

The sentence will probably be served in a maximum-security facility in his Adelaide hometown. US officials indicated that Hicks would return to Australia within 60 days of his sentencing.

Last year Prime Minister John Howard secured a commitment from Washington that Hicks could serve any remainder of his jail time in Australia.

'He's not a hero in my eyes,' Howard said. 'The bottom line will always be that he pleaded guilty to knowingly assisting a terrorist organization.'

Democrats member of parliament Natasha Stott Despoja claimed the plea bargain had been arranged to suit Howard as he prepared the ground for a general election expected in November.

'This sentence arrangement suits the government,' she said. 'I can see how convenient this is for a government under pressure.'

The Labor Party is ahead in the polls and an incarcerated Hicks would be a black mark against a government already struggling on other issues.

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 terrorism suspects. Years of legal wrangling preceded the trial.

In court on Friday, the prosecutor, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Chenail, sought a maximum sentence, noting that Hicks would 'always be a threat unless he changes his beliefs, his extremist ideology.'

'The real damage Hicks can do is to influence other confused souls,' Chenail was quoted as saying by the military press service.

Hicks' defence attorney, Marine Major Michael Mori, who has travelled several times to Australia to build support for his case, argued that Hicks was a high school dropout who was desperate for acceptance after he failed to qualify for the Australian army.

After signing up with al-Qaeda, however, Hicks got a taste of real combat in Afghanistan, then panicked and ran away, Mori said.

'His heart wasn't in al-Qaeda,' Mori was quoted as saying. 'He wanted to be a soldier, and it was the one place he could do it.'

Mori asked for an 18-month sentence to give Hicks 'an opportunity to try to make a new start in life.'

Hicks confessed to attending al-Qaeda training courses and to travelling to Afghanistan from Pakistan after the September 11 attacks, intent on joining the fight against the US-led coalition.

He said he sold the AK-47 assault rifle he was issued with at Kandahar airport to raise the cab fare to flee to Pakistan. The taxi was stopped by anti-Taliban forces and he was handed over to US forces.

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

Guantanamo holds about 400 detainees, including 14 high-level suspects transferred there last year after being held at secret CIA sites abroad.

Hicks' 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.