Al-Qaeda volunteer David Hicks will leave Guantanamo soon to serve a nine-month prison term in his native Australia after pleading guilty to a terrorism charge and recanting allegations he was abused by US authorities.
Hicks will head out of the Guantanamo detention camp within two months and serve out his sentence in his home country as part of a plea deal revealed late Friday at a US military tribunal.
In return, Hicks renounced his earlier statements that he suffered abuse at the hands of US authorities before or after his arrival at the controversial camp at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He also agreed not to speak to the media about his Al-Qaeda experience for a year and to cooperate with US and Australian intelligence agencies.
"Today is the first day in over five years of David Hicks's life that there's actually some certainty," his defense lawyer, Colonel Michael Mori, said afterward. "It's certain that David Hicks should be back in Australia no later than the 29th of May of this year."
The outcome was a stunning reversal of fortune for the former horse trainer and kangaroo skinner, who spent more than five years at the Guantanamo and whose case became a cause celebre in Australia.
The United States had come under heavy pressure over the case from Australia's conservative government, which had been slammed at home for allegedly failing to protect the interests of one of its citizens.
Hicks's father, Terry Hicks, said Saturday it was a bittersweet result, and insisted his son had been abused while in US hands despite his statement Friday.
"The Americans made David sign a paper to say he was never abused... when we knew he has been -- David told us," Hicks senior told the Australian Associated Press.
Human rights groups questioned the plea deal's requirement that Hicks refrain from speaking to the media for a year.
"If the United States had nothing to be ashamed of, it would not hide behind a gag rule that would be clearly illegal in our own courts," said Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Tribunal lawyers said the plea deal, kept secret until Friday, was worked out between Hicks's defense lawyers and the judicial chief of the new tribunal system, Susan Crawford, a retired judge appointed by the US defense secretary.
A panel of military officers recommended a seven-year sentence, but the secret plea deal barred Hicks from serving more than nine months.
Human rights monitors called the nine-month prison term a suspiciously convenient timetable for Australia's government to ensure Hicks will be behind bars and out of the spotlight before an election expected later this year.
"It might just be a coincidence but if it is, it's an amazing one," said Lex Lasry, independent observer for the law counsel of Australia, who watched the proceedings.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard lashed out at critics he said had tried to turn David Hicks into a "hero."
"The bottom line will always be that he pleaded guilty to knowingly assisting a terrorist organisation," Howard told reporters.
The Hicks case marks the first conviction by the new military tribunals and the first conviction in a US war crimes trial since World War II.
The tribunals, or commissions, operate outside of regular US courts and even Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the tribunal trials may lack credibility abroad.
The chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, said the outcome showed the tribunal system operated in a fair way and was not skewed in favor of prosecutors.
"I think David Hicks is very fortunate, he's getting a second chance," said Davis.
Hicks, who remained subdued throughout the hearing, earlier pleaded guilty to attending Al-Qaeda training camps and volunteering to fight in support of the Taliban regime during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
During the sentencing hearing rival military lawyers had portrayed Hicks as either a harmless "wanna be" soldier who never attacked US targets or as a dangerous "enemy" loyal to Al-Qaeda.
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