Hicks free after the Federal election
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Hicks free by December 30
Herald-Sun
March 31, 2007 12:00am
Confessed terrorist David Hicks will be returned home to Australia by December 30.
Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for five years, has been sentenced to seven years jail, but will serve only nine months after the rest of the sentence was suspended.
Hicks, 31, will serve his time in Australia under a plea deal and must arrive in Australia before May 29, 2007.
A military jury sentenced him to seven years, but under the terms of the plea deal, the military commission's convening authority suspended six years and three months of the sentence.
The conviction makes him the first of hundreds of suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba to be sentenced and the first sentenced by a US war-crimes trial since World War II.
Military Commission judge Colonel Ralph Kohlmann announced the jail term after an emotional, fast-paced day of testimony and argument at the court complex on the Guantanamo Bay naval base.
Under the plea bargain struck by lawyers on both sides, and accepted by Hicks, he must be transferred into Australian custody within 60 days.
There is no time served component in the sentence, so Hicks does not get credit for the five years and four months he has already served at Guantanamo's notorious prison system.
Hicks, 31, had entered a plea of guilty to the charge of providing material support for terrorism.
He was captured in Afghanistan in December, 2001, after training with terror group al-Qaeda and fighting with the Taliban against invading Coalition forces.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/comments/0,22023,21479140-661,00.html
