Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - Australian born, thirty-one-year-old, David Mathew Hicks, was among the first of Bush's war on terrorism prisoners to face war tribunal charges and convicted of material support to terrorism last March. He was sentenced to an additional nine months to be served out in his native Australia and released into their custody today.
Reportedly he was picked-up on the battlefield in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban where he was spotted wearing a T-shirt that read: "I was just trained by Al-Qaeda and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
Hicks's defense attorney countered that his client was a ninth-grade dropout and 'wannabe' soldier who ran away when the shooting started.
Hicks sat quietly throughout the secured military tribunal proceedings wearing another T-shirt with an arrow pointing in the direction of his defense attorney, that read: "I'm with stupid."
Hick's attorney denounced the proceedings as being little more than a Kangaroo Court, using his client to encourage other prisoners to make false confessions in exchange for a lighter sentence to empty out the controversial prison camp, making room for American liberals.
Prosecutors denied the charge; though they admitted Hicks conceded to a written agreement not to speak with reporters for one year after his release and recant any allegation he made that his captors tortured him, which he readily singed in his own blood.
While Hicks was taken out of his prison cell and released into Australian custody, he was spotted wearing yet another T-shirt that read: "I just spent the last 5 years of my life in Guantanamo Bay without a trial and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
