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Australia police to lift control order on ex-Guantanamo detainee Hicks

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced Thursday that they will lift restrictions on former Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks. The announcement came after Hicks issued a plea by posting a video on the website of Australian advocacy group GetUp!, asking for members' help in lifting the restrictions so that he could "get on with life." Hicks was placed under a control order in December 2007 that restricted his movements by requiring him to check in with police three times a week,comply with a midnight to 6AM curfew and not leave the country. The control order is set to expire next month, and the AFP has indicated that it will not seek to renew it. Hicks pleaded guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism before a US military commission in March 2007 after spending more than five years in US custody following his capture in Afghanistan. He was transferred to Australia in May 2007 to serve the remainder of his nine-month prison sentence at a maximum security prison near his hometown of Adelaide, South Australia, and was released last December. The control order was relaxed last February, permitting Hicks to live anywhere in the country, and requiring him to check in with police only twice a week.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on November 20, 2008 (boomark / email).