David Hicks Going Home to Oz; 385 Remain

David Hicks, an Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee, will be home within two months and has agreed to testify against other terrorist suspects.

He was formally convicted this weekend of providing material support to terrorism and will receive a maximum of seven years in jail as part of a plea deal agreed this week. The following conditions were part of Hicks' plea deal:

• Hicks agreed that he would get no credit for the five years he has already been incarcerated at Guantanamo;
• Hicks was required to sign away any rights to sue the U.S. for any illegal treatment that he had received (although the U.S. would not admit that he actually did receive illegal treatment);
• Hicks will be banned from speaking to the media for one year;
• Any money Hicks makes from selling his story will go to the Australian Government;
• Hicks was required to sign a statement that he had "never been illegally treated by any persons in the control or custody of the United States".

In the hearing, the prosecutor warned Hicks that if his guilty plea was not genuine and was being offered only to escape Guantanamo Bay, he would be prosecuted for perjury.

Hicks, who is said to have renounced Islam while in prison, took the oath before giving an explanation of behavior, swearing to tell the truth "so help me God".

In the confession, Hicks testified to the following:

• In January 2001 he traveled to Afghanistan with the assistance of the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba to attend an al-Qaeda training camp;
• He went to an eight-week training camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he learned about weapons, land mines, explosives and tactics;
• He attended a second training course in April 2001 on guerilla warfare and mountain tactics. It was during this course that he met Osama bin Laden. When bin Laden arrived at the camp, the recruits had their weapons taken away and were lined up when he spoke to them;
• He had asked bin Laden why al-Qaeda's training manuals were not in English;
• He attended a third training course in June 2001 on urban fighting, which included sniper training and techniques on kidnapping and assassination;
• He conducted surveillance of the former American embassy in Kabul;
• Two days before the September 11 attacks, he left Afghanistan, traveling to Pakistan. He saw the television coverage of the World Trade Center attacks there. The next day, he returned to Afghanistan;
• He was at Kandahar's airport when the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan began on October 7;
• He served guard duty outside the airport for about a week from October 10-17;
• He then went to the front lines in Konduz, but fled when they were overrun. He was captured while trying to flee the country using his Australian passport.

Prosecutors had sought, but failed, to get Hicks to confess that he had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and that he had met American Taliban member John Walker Lindh and/or the British shoe bomber Richard Reid.

Hicks's father, Terry, said: " He's had five years of absolute hell [in Guantanamo]. I think anyone in that position-- if they were offered [any kind of deal]-- they would take it."

As of this weekend, approximately 385 people remain indefinitely imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.

Story: Mark Coultan of the Sydney Morning Herald