Jail: a police convoy carrying former Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks arrives at the Yatala Labour Prison near Adelaide: Reuters

Hicks transported to Australian jail

By Todd Cardy
May 20, 2007 04:17pm

DAVID Hicks will spend the next seven months at Yatala Labour Prison, Adelaide's maximum-security jail and home to South Australia's toughest criminals.

The confessed terrorism supporter was transferred today to the prison after flying in from Guantanamo Bay to Edinburgh RAAF base in Adelaide's outer northern suburbs at 9.50am (CST).

Hicks's Australian lawyer David McLeod said the convict was "visibly elated" when he arrived on Australian soil, still wearing the orange jumpsuit given to him at Guantanamo Bay.

A convoy of seven vehicles drove Hicks straight through the jail's gates and into the prison compound at about 10.40am (CST) as a crowd of about 20 curious onlookers and a large media contingent watched from outside the prison walls.

A short time later, the Federal Government confirmed Hicks's arrival in Adelaide in a joint statement from Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.

Mr Downer said a $500,000 charter flight was the only practical way to return Hicks to Australia because security and logistical problems meant he could not be returned on a commercial flight.

Yatala Labour Prison

Inside jail, Hicks will be strip-searched and examined before being moved to solitary confinement and given standard-issue prison clothes.

He will be assigned to a cell in the prison's Division G, reserved for the state's toughest criminals including the Snowtown "bodies in barrels" murderers John Bunting and Robert Wagner.

Prison guards will constantly supervise the 31-year-old Muslim convert who is expected to remain locked inside his 2x4m cell for 23 hours a day.

But for a man who has been held in far worse conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Yatala jail may seen like luxury.

The San Francisco Chronicle in an editorial earlier this year described Guantanamo as "America's best known dungeon" and a "tropical purgatory", while Amnesty International labelled it as the "gulag of our times".

Guantanamo Bay

When Hicks was first detained at the US military base in January 2002, a month after he was captured among Taliban forces in Afghanistan, he was held in a makeshift wire cage in Camp X-Ray.

During that time, Hicks's lawyers complained that the former Adelaide man had been tortured by prison officers – claims that were rejected by US and Australian authorities.

Hicks also withdrew the accusations in his guilty plea deal signed with US prosecutors in March.

Hicks's most recent home in Guantanamo before returning to Australia was at Camp 6, a large newly built white maximum security prison in Cuba.

His cell there was a sparse 7.4sq m room with no window to the outside world and a concrete slab for a bed, lined with a thin foam mat.

He will face similar accommodation at Yatala but the smell of freedom around the corner may make the next seven months the easiest of Hicks' more than five years in detention.

In March, Hicks was sentenced to a total of seven years jail, with all but nine months suspended. He will serve the remainder of those nine months at Yatala and is scheduled for release at the end of December.

Media gag order

Hicks's father Terry said he did not expect to see his son for up to a week but would urge him to speak to the media after being released.

"I think that what we've got to do is explain to David the facts of life, that the media won't let him go until he's spoken to them so what we're going to do is hold a press conference for everybody," he said.

Speaking publicly would breach Hicks's 12-month gag order, but Mr Hicks said the Government was unlikely to react.

"Once he's in the (prison) system we can get a meeting with the jail to find out visitation rights, what we can take in to him and what we can bring away for him and that sort of thing," he said.

News Limited

We dont want him, we just wanted him to be convicted rather than be held without trial , what a fo par..