Hicks faces about a year in Australian jail

Tom Allard

DAVID HICKS will be behind bars in Australia until after this year’s election, but his stint in an Adelaide prison will be relatively short, under a plea bargain being hammered out between prosecutors and his defence counsel.

Government sources confirmed yesterday that Hicks’s prospective sentence would take into account his five years and two months in Guantanamo Bay but would also include a short period to be served in Australia. That period is “not close” to the five years being mooted in some reports, one government official said. The Herald understands that additional time to be served in Australia is about a year.

The outcome, still to be approved by a panel of US military commission officials and its Convening Authority, is a bonus for the Federal Government, as Hicks will be unable to conduct potentially embarrassing interviews before this year’s election.

Terry Hicks, who heard of his son’s guilty plea on an airport tarmac as he prepared to leave Guantanamo Bay for Australia, yesterday blamed the Federal Government for influencing the court hearing and forcing the guilty plea. “They demonised him, they prejudged him for five years,” he said. “I suppose Mr Howard would be throwing his hands up with glee at the moment, but … this was a way out for David regardless of whether he was guilty or innocent.”

Mr Howard said he was not into “glee and vindication”. “I understand how Mr Hicks feels. It is his son,” he said. “I respect that, but let me deal with the facts. His son has pleaded guilty to a charge that he knowingly gave assistance to a known terrorist organisation, namely al-Qaeda.”

But there is no doubt the Government is delighted. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said yesterday the Government had unashamedly “been tough on the Hicks case”. However, it remains unclear how long it will take for Hicks to return. First he and his lawyers have to agree on which of 24 specific allegations that underpinned the charge of providing material support to terrorists he will admit to.

Hicks will also be grilled by a military commission judge over the authenticity of his guilty plea. His sentence will then be completed, probably within a week.

Hicks, along with the US and Australian governments, will then have to agree on the conditions surrounding his transfer to Australia.

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said the process meant that Hicks had no grounds to appeal against his sentence when he returned home, despite suggestions from the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, to the contrary.

Mr Ruddock also said international prisoner exchange treaties prevented the Government receiving the prisoner from altering his sentence. This has implications for any attempt by a Rudd Labor government, or the South Australian Government, which will run his prison, to commute his sentence or offer a pardon.

“The principle is very clear: if a country were to unilaterally vary a sentence imposed on an individual in another jurisdiction, no country would deliver anybody up,” Mr Ruddock said.

He also said Hicks would be banned from selling his story, which publicists said yesterday would be worth more than $1 million. In a letter to his friend Louise Fletcher, Hicks urged her not to write a book about him “because I would have no chance to make any money when I get home”.

The Government spent more than $300,000 assisting Hicks, his lawyers and his father. The journey of Terry Hicks and David’s sister Stephanie to Guantanamo Bay was paid by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

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