Guantanamo Detainee Returns to Australia

Al-Qaeda supporter goes straight to prison
By Marie Morris,  Newser Staff
Posted May 19, 2007 9:33 PM CDT
Guantanamo Detainee Returns to Australia
Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks is seen in this undated photo released by the Hicks family. Unlike most prison inmates, al-Qaida soldier David hicks will be required to vote in Australia's elections later this year after he returns from Guantanamo Bay to serve out the remainder of his...   (Associated Press)

After five years in custody at Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks is back in his native Australia, where the convicted Al-Qaeda supporter will spend the next seven months in a maximum-security prison. His family and other supporters spent years campaigning for his release before Hicks pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Now 31, Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. After his plea, he was sentenced to seven years, most of which was suspended, and banned from speaking with the media for a year. He was the first Guantanamo detainee tried in an American military court and the first person since World War II to be convicted in a war-crimes tribunal. (More David Hicks stories.)

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