Friday, December 21, 2007

Australia imposes tight controls on Guantánamo detainee

Former Guantánamo Bay inmate David Hicks will face strict restrictions when he is released from an Australian prison next week, a magistrate has ruled.
Warren Donald said Hicks remained a threat to Australia's national security as he imposed a control order which requires the Muslim convert to report to police three times a week, stay at premises agreed on by police, remain in Australia and not contact a list of terror suspects.

Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner, is due to be freed on December 29 from a high-security prison in Adelaide.
He had spent more than five years at Guantánamo Bay without trial after being captured in 2001 in Afghanistan.

At a US military tribunal in March, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaida. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, but most of it was suspended, allowing his release next week.

Hicks was returned to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence. He has not been convicted of any crime in the country, but police sought a control order.

He has admitted he attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan, and prosecutors said evidence showed Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat, guerrilla warfare and advanced marksmanship from al-Qaida 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-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden 20 times and described him as a "lovely brother".

The magistrate said the chances that Hicks would engage in a terrorist act were small, but evidence presented to court showed he did have the capacity to do so, and was therefore a risk to national security.

"I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that there is a risk of the respondent either participating in a terrorist act or training others for that purpose," Donald said in his ruling.

The restrictions will last for one year, although Hicks has an opportunity to challenge the orders at a hearing on February 18.

His father, Terry, said: "All David wants to do is get back in the mainstream, get on his with life, get on with a job, try to get into a university. David has been under immense pressure for six years and now he's got another 12 months of pressure."

Only one other terrorist suspect has been given a control order in Australia. The first was imposed last year on Melbourne man Jack Thomas, who is facing a retrial on terror-related charges.

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