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Hicks admits to supporting terrorism

Australian David Hicks has pleaded guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism before a US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, more than five years after he was detained in Afghanistan.

Looking somber with his hands clasped in front of him, Hicks, 31, stood beside his US military lawyer who entered a guilty plea to the charge of providing "material support for terrorism."

The plea late on Monday came a day after defense lawyers said Hicks was weighing a possible plea deal that could get him out of the prison for "war on terror" detainees at the remote US naval base in southeast Cuba.

"This is the first step towards David returning to Australia," David McLeod, an Australian defense lawyer for Hicks, told reporters afterward.

A former horse trainer in the Australian outback who converted to Islam, Hicks had been portrayed by the prosecution as an aspiring holy warrior trained by al-Qaeda and as a restless youth by his family.

The Hicks case has became a major political issue in Australia. Its conservative government, which had lobbied Washington to expedite the trial, welcomed the plea but complained that the legal process had taken too long.

"I'm pleased for everybody's sake that this saga has come to a conclusion," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

However, Downer said: "My view was always the legal process had just taken far too long."

Defense lawyers say that the Australian government had pushed much harder for progress in the case in the past year after coming under mounting criticism at home over the issue.

Downer said that Hicks would be back in Australia soon under a deal struck between the two governments.

"We have an arrangement with the Americans whereby he can serve any residue of his sentence in an Australian prison," Downer said.

Hicks was accused of training at an al-Qaeda camp in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan and allegedly volunteering to fight alongside Taliban forces during the US-led invasion in 2001.

He was the first detainee to be charged before the new tribunals, which were reconstituted under a controversial new law after a previous tribunal system was tossed out by the US Supreme Court last year. Hicks is also the first detainee at Guantanamo to be convicted by US authorities.

He pleaded guilty to the overall charge of supporting a terrorist organization, but pleaded not guilty to a provision that alleged he had conspired to commit specific crimes, defense lawyers said.

Hicks entered the plea only hours after a visit by his sister and father, Terry Hicks, whom he had not seen since August 2004.

His father said earlier it was an emotional meeting with his son, who he said looked "bloody terrible."

Hicks faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for the charge, but prosecutors said they would not seek a life term.
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