88 Facts About David Hicks

David Matthew Hicks was born on 7 August 1975 and is an Australian who attended al-Qaeda's Al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, and met with Osama bin Laden during 2001.

David Hicks was then detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay detention camp from 2002 until 2007.

David Hicks was born in Adelaide, South Australia, to Terry and Susan Hicks.

David Hicks's parents separated when he was ten years old, and his father later remarried.

David Hicks moved between various jobs, including factory work and working at a series of outback cattle stations in the Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia.

David Hicks met Jodie Sparrow in Adelaide when he was 17 years old.

Sparrow already had a daughter, whom David Hicks raised as his own.

David Hicks appeared in court in April 2017 for allegedly assaulting a subsequent partner in Craigmore, South Australia but the case was dropped with legal costs awarded against the South Australia Police.

In 2007, David Hicks consented to a plea bargain in which he pleaded guilty to charges of providing material support for terrorism by the United States Guantanamo military commission under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

David Hicks became one of the first people charged and subsequently convicted under the Military Commissions Act.

In October 2012, the United States Court of Appeals ruled that the charge under which David Hicks had been convicted was invalid because the law did not exist at the time of the alleged offence, and it could not be applied retroactively.

In January 2015, David Hicks' lawyer announced that the US government had said that it does not dispute he is innocent and his conviction was not correct.

David Hicks was later reported to have been publicly denounced due to his lack of religious observance.

David Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 by the Afghan Northern Alliance and sold for a US$5,000 bounty to the United States military.

David Hicks was transported to Guantanamo Bay where he was designated an enemy combatant.

David Hicks said that Hicks should not have been prosecuted.

David Hicks served his term in Adelaide's Yatala Labour Prison and was released under a control order on 29 December 2007.

David Hicks converted to Islam, and began studying Wahhabism at a mosque in Gilles Plains, a suburb north of Adelaide.

The president of the Islamic Society of South Australia, Wali Hanifi, described David Hicks as having "some interest in military things", and that "after personal experience and research, that Islam was the answer".

In 2010, David Hicks explained his motivation to convert to Islam:.

David Hicks renounced his faith during the earlier years of his detention at Guantanamo.

In June 2006, Moazzam Begg, a British man who had been held at Guantanamo Bay but was released in 2005, claimed in his book, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back, that David Hicks had abandoned his Islamic beliefs, and had been denounced by a fellow inmate, Uthman al-Harbi, for his lack of observance.

Around May 1999, David Hicks travelled to Albania in order to join the Kosovo Liberation Army.

David Hicks described his time with the KLA as a life-changing experience and on his return to Australia, converted to Islam and began studying at a mosque in Gilles Plains in Adelaide.

On 11 November 1999, David Hicks travelled to Pakistan to study Islam and allegedly began training with Lashkar-e-Taiba in early 2000.

David Hicks took extensive notes on, and made sketches of, various weaponry mechanisms and attack strategies.

In January 2001, David Hicks was provided with funding and an introductory letter from Lashkar-e-Taiba.

David Hicks turned over his passport and told them that he would use the alias "Muhammad Dawood".

David Hicks denies any involvement with al-Qaeda, and that he knew the camp had any al-Qaeda links.

On one occasion when al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden visited an Afghan camp, the US Defense Department alleges David Hicks questioned bin Laden about the lack of English in training material and subsequently "began to translate the training camp materials from Arabic to English".

David Hicks denies this and denies having had the necessary language proficiency, a claim supported by Major Michael Mori and fellow detainee Moazzam Begg.

David Hicks wrote home that he had met Osama bin Laden 20 times.

David Hicks later told investigators he had exaggerated, that he had seen bin Laden about eight times and spoken to him only once.

Prosecutors allege David Hicks was interviewed by Mohammed Atef, an al-Qaeda military commander, about his background and "the travel habits of Australians".

On 9 September 2001, David Hicks travelled from Afghanistan to Pakistan to visit a friend.

David Hicks returned in order to get his passport and birth certificate back so he could travel home to Adelaide.

Terry David Hicks, said that his son seemed at first unaware, then sceptical, of the 11 September attacks when they spoke on a mobile phone in early November 2001.

In October and November 2001, David Hicks wrote multiple letters to his mother in Australia.

David Hicks asked that replies were to be directed to Abu Muslim Austraili, a pseudonym he used to circumvent non-Muslim spies he believed intercepted correspondence.

David Hicks wrote a number of anti Semitic letters during his time in Afghanistan which were published in The Australian with statements such as "The Jews have complete financial and media control many of them are in the Australian government" and "The western society is controlled by the Jews".

In November 2005, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners TV program broadcast for the first time a transcript of an interview with David Hicks, conducted by the Australian Federal Police in 2002, and other material, including a report that David Hicks had signed a statement written by American military investigators stating that he had trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, learning guerrilla tactics and urban warfare.

David Hicks denied engaging in any actual fighting against US or allied forces and states in his autobiography that he was made to sign the statement under extreme duress.

David Hicks was captured by a "Northern Alliance warlord" near Kunduz, Afghanistan, on or about 9 December 2001 and turned over to US Special Forces for US$5000 on 17 December 2001.

In 2002, David Hicks's father sought to have him brought to Australia for trial.

In 2003, the Australian government requested that David Hicks be brought to trial without further delay, extending David Hicks consular support and legal aid under the Special Circumstances Overseas Scheme.

David Hicks said he met with US military investigators conducting a probe into detainee abuse in Afghanistan and had told the International Red Cross on earlier occasions that he had been mistreated.

David Hicks told his family in a 2004 visit to Guantanamo Bay that he had been anally assaulted during interrogation by the US in Afghanistan while he was hooded and restrained.

David Hicks remained in solitary confinement, for seven weeks after the US Supreme Court's confirmed a ruling that the commissions were unconstitutional, which confinement was reported to have "deteriorated his condition".

David Hicks was a well-behaved detainee, but was in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.

David Hicks claimed to have declined a visit from Australian Consular officials because he had been punished for speaking candidly with consular officials about the conditions of his detention on previous visits.

David Hicks was talking about suicidal impulses during his periods in isolation at Camp Echo.

David Hicks was charged by a US military commission on 26 August 2004.

The commission trying David Hicks was abolished and the charges against him voided.

Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions, alleged that David Hicks had been issued with weapons to fight US troops, and had conducted surveillance against US and international embassies.

David Hicks alleged that Hicks "knew and associated with a number of al-Qaeda senior leadership" and that "he conducted surveillance on the US embassy and other embassies".

David Hicks went on to compare Hicks to the Bali bombers, expressing concern that Australians were misjudging the military commission system due to PR "smoke" from Hicks's lawyer.

James Yee, an Islamic US Army chaplain who regularly counselled David Hicks while detained at Guantanamo Bay, gave a statement shortly after David Hicks was freed in December 2007.

In November 2004, David Hicks's trial was delayed when a US Federal Court ruled that the military commissions in question were unconstitutional.

In February 2005, the Hicks's family lawyer, Stephen Kenny, who had been representing Hicks in Australia without compensation since 2002, was dismissed from the defence team and Vietnam veteran and army reservist David McLeod replaced him.

David Hicks's trial was next set for 10 January 2005 but there were numerous postponements and further legal wrangling over the years that followed.

On 9 March 2007, his lawyer said that David Hicks was expected to bring a case seeking to force the Australian Federal Government to ask the US government to free him.

In September 2005, it was realised that David Hicks may be eligible for British citizenship through his mother, as a consequence of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.

David Hicks applied for citizenship, but there were six months of delays.

On 17 March 2006 the Home Office alleged during its appeal case that David Hicks had admitted in 2003 to the Security Service that he had undergone extensive terrorist training in Afghanistan.

On 12 April 2006 the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's decision that David Hicks was entitled to British citizenship.

The reason given was that David Hicks was an Australian citizen when he was captured and detained and that he had received Australian consular assistance.

David Hicks's lawyer questioned whether David Hicks could have been part of a suicide plot, since he had spent the preceding four months in solitary confinement in a different part of the camp, and expressed concern that attorney-client confidentiality, "the last legal right that was being respected", had been violated.

On 1 March 2007, David Hicks was formally charged with material support for terrorism, and referred to trial by the special military commission.

The United States countered that the charges relating to David Hicks were not retrospective but that the Military Commissions Act had codified offences that had been traditionally tried by military commissions and did not establish any new crimes.

The agreement stipulated that David Hicks enter an Alford plea to a single charge of providing material support for terrorism in return for a guarantee of a much shorter sentence than had been previously sought by the prosecution.

David Hicks went on to note that 'no one looks on [the agreement] as a proper judicial procedure at all.

Davis later elaborated, saying that the David Hicks trial was flawed and appeared rushed for the political benefit of the Howard government in Australia.

In November 2007, allegations from an anonymous US military officer, that a high-level political agreement had occurred in the David Hicks case, were reported.

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock stated that Australian law would not prohibit David Hicks from speaking to media, although David Hicks would be prevented from selling his story.

On 20 May 2007, David Hicks arrived at RAAF Base Edinburgh in Adelaide, South Australia on a chartered flight reported to have cost the Australian government up to A$500,000.

David Hicks was taken to Adelaide's Yatala Labour Prison where he was kept in solitary confinement in the state's highest-security ward, G Division.

David Hicks was released on 29 December 2007 and placed under a control order obtained by the AFP earlier that month.

On 20 February 2008, David Hicks moved to Abbotsford, New South Wales.

David Hicks married Aloysia David Hicks, a human rights activist who studied at the University of Sydney.

In October 2012, the United States Court of Appeals ruled that the charge under which David Hicks had been convicted was invalid, because the law did not exist at the time of the alleged offence, and it could not be applied retrospectively.

The efforts of the US to charge David Hicks have been described as "a significant departure from the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, quite apart from the US constitution", the implications being that "anyone in the world, who has suitable radical connections and who is in a war zone fighting against Americans, is guilty of a war crime".

David Hicks's reply advised that Hicks's motion shouldn't be considered, on the grounds he had pleaded guilty.

On 16 October 2010, Random House Australia published an autobiography of David Hicks, entitled Guantanamo: My Journey.

On 23 July 2012, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced that the case against David Hicks had been dropped, as documentary evidence such as David Hicks' guilty plea and other admissions may not be admissible in court due to the circumstances in which they were obtained.

Outside court, David Hicks claimed that the decision had cleared his name.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard refused to comment on whether the decision meant David Hicks' name had been cleared, saying it was a decision independent of government.

David Hicks' autobiography is believed to have sold 30,000 copies, generating around $10,000 in royalties.

David Hicks' family was consulted for the play, with many of the vignettes based on the few letters they received from Mr David Hicks during the first two years of his imprisonment.