SA: Osama bin Laden a "lovely" man, Hicks said

AAP General News (Australia)
12-20-2007
SA: Osama bin Laden a "lovely" man, Hicks said

ADELAIDE, Dec 20 AAP - David Hicks described Osama bin Laden as "lovely" and trained
with al-Qaeda a month before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a court has heard.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) also told a court in Adelaide today that Hicks could
still be seen as a perceived threat to Australia.

The AFP today asked the Federal Magistrates Court to impose a control order on Hicks,
the convicted terrorism supporter and former Guantanamo Bay inmate who is due for release
from an Adelaide jail in nine days.

If granted, it would be only the second control order granted in Australia.

Hicks' lawyers today told the court they would not oppose the control order but would
contest certain proposed aspects of it.

AFP lawyer Andrew Berger said Hicks had admitted taking part in four al-Qaeda training
camps between January 2001 and August 2001 - a month before the terrorist attacks in the
United States.

He also detailed letters from Hicks to his family in Adelaide during 2001.

Mr Berger said in a May 2001 letter to family, Hicks wrote: "By the way I have met
Osama bin Laden 20 times now, lovely brother, everything for the cause of Islam. The only
reason the west calls him the most wanted Muslim is because he's got the money to take
action."

Hicks admitted he attended al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan in an interview with
AFP officers while detained at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in May
2002, Mr Berger said.

Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat training, guerilla
warfare and advanced marksmanship, he told the court.

"It was a systematic and sustained attempt to seek out training," Mr Berger said.

"This is not a man who was full of hot air."

Specifics of the proposed control order, and the aspects to be contested by Hicks'
lawyers, have yet to be detailed to the court.

A US military commission in March this year sentenced Hicks to seven years in jail,
with all but nine months 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 at Yatala prison in Adelaide.

The father of two was detained in December 2001 by US forces in Afghanistan, where
he had been fighting with the Taliban, and spent more than five years without trial in
Guantanamo Bay.

Australia's first control order was imposed last year on Melbourne man Jack Thomas,
who is facing a retrial on terror-related charges.

The High Court in August this year dismissed a constitutional challenge by Thomas to
the validity of the control order legislation.

The hearing was continuing.

AAP sl/sp

KEYWORD: HICKS

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