Restrictions for Aust Terror Supporter

[Kiwi]

O ho a hunting we will go. 

Restrictions for Aust Terror Supporter

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — Former Guantanamo terror prisoner David Hicks is a threat to Australia's national security and has to report regularly to police and stay indoors from midnight to dawn after he is released from prison next week, a magistrate ruled Friday.

Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner who pleaded guilty to supporting al-Qaida at a U.S. military tribunal after being captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, faces strict conditions when he returns to society on Dec. 29 after almost seven years in detention.

The father of two was captured in December 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban, and spent more than five years without trial at Guantanamo Bay.

A U.S. military commission sitting in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sentenced Hicks, a Muslim convert, in March to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended after he pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.

Under a plea bargain, Hicks was returned to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence.

He has not been convicted of any crime in Australia, but federal police sought an order in the Federal Magistrate's Court imposing restrictions on his movement and other measures under anti-terrorism laws.

Hicks has admitted he attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan, and prosecutors said evidence showed Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat, guerrilla warfare and advanced marksmanship from al-Qaida and the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

On Thursday, police lawyer Andrew Berger quoted letters sent in 2001 by Hicks to his family in which he said he had met al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden 20 times and described him as a "lovely brother."

Magistrate Warren Donald agreed to impose the order, which requires Hicks to report to police three times a week and obey a curfew by staying indoors at premises to be agreed on by police. Other restrictions include that he not leave Australia, nor contact a list of terror suspects.

Donald said the chances that Hicks would engage in a terrorist act were small, but that the evidence presented to court showed he did have the capacity to do so, and was therefore a risk to national security.

"I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that there is a risk of the respondent either participating in a terrorist act or training others for that purpose," Donald said in his ruling.

The restrictions will last for one year. Hicks will have an opportunity to challenge the orders at a hearing set down for Feb. 18.

Hicks is due to be walk free on Dec. 29 from the Yatala high security prison in the southern city of Adelaide.

Hicks' lawyers did not object to the control order, though they argued the thrice weekly reporting condition was too onerous.

"David's intention all along upon release is to be a model citizen," David McLeod, Hicks' lawyer, told reporters outside the court. "He simply wants to get on with his life. He will honor and abide by the decision."

Hicks' father, Terry, said the conditions would be tough.

"All David Hicks wants to do is get back in the mainstream, get on his with life, get on with a job, try to get into a university," Terry Hicks told Southern Cross Broadcasting radio. "David has been under immense pressure for six years and now he's got another 12 months of pressure."

Hicks' control order is the second of its kind in Australia. The first was imposed last year on Melbourne man Jack Thomas, who authorities allege trained in al-Qaida terror camps in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001, and who is facing a retrial on terror-related charges.