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2015-02-19 Home Front: WoT
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Court Nixes Guantanamo Conviction of Australian Ex-Detainee
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[ABCNEWS.GO] An appeals court on Wednesday struck down the terrorism conviction of Australian David Hicks, reversing one of the few successful prosecutions of a prisoner before a U.S. military court at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review vacated Hicks' March 2007 guilty plea, the first conviction of a prisoner at the base in Cuba and still one of only a handful.
"We had been waiting for this decision for years," Hicks said at a news conference in Sydney. "It's a relief because it's over."
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Hicks, 39, pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism. It was a plea bargain in which all but nine months of his seven-year sentence was suspended and he was allowed to return home by the end of that year.
Last year, an appeal's court ruling in the case of another detainee found that material support was not a legally viable war crime for conduct that occurred before 2006, when Congress passed legislation authorizing the special wartime court at Guantanamo known as a military commission. Hicks had been in custody since late 2001.
"What he was doing there was not at that time illegal," said Stephen Kenny, his Australian lawyer. "He wasn't doing anything that was a breach of Australian, international or U.S. law. That is what this decision today confirms."
Prosecutors conceded that material support was no longer a crime but argued his conviction should still stand because he agreed not to appeal as part of the plea deal, an argument rejected by the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review. 
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Posted by Fred 2015-02-19 00:00||
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