Hicks could return home this week

Source: AAP

CONFESSED terrorism supporter David Hicks could be returned to Australia as early as this week.

The 31-year-old's Australian lawyer, David McLeod, has left Adelaide bound for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Hicks has been in US military custody for more than five years.

Hicks was sentenced to a total of seven years jail with all but nine months suspended after pleading guilty to a charge of providing material support for terrorism before a US military commission in March.



Read more: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21722098-1702,00.html

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"It feels terrific, this is the seventh trip to Guantanamo Bay for me and who would have thought that it would take seven visits to achieve what should have been done a long time ago?"

Source: Associated Press

PM: Hicks' Return to Australia a Secret

By ROD McGUIRK
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 17, 2007; 4:18 AM

CANBERRA, Australia -- The United States and Australia have
finalized plans to repatriate Australian al-Qaida supporter David
Hicks from Guantanamo Bay but the timetable will remain secret,
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Thursday.

Hicks will be sent to a maximum security prison in his hometown
of Adelaide when he arrives by chartered jet as early as next
week from the U.S. military prison in Cuba where he has spent
more than five years.

The 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner must be repatriated by
May 29 under the conditions of a plea deal struck in March. His
case marked the first U.S. war crimes conviction since World
War II.

Downer said Hicks would return "fairly soon," but law enforcement
authorities wanted his arrival kept secret until he was behind bars.
Hicks will serve a nine-month sentence in Australia.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051700350.html