Roundup: Australia violates human rights of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner: UN

The Australian government violated the rights of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks by keeping him in jail for months following his return to Australia, a United Nations (UN) human rights committee has found.

A panel of 18 independent experts told the UN that Hicks, an Australian who spent more than five years in the United States' Cuban- based detention camp for suspected terrorists, had no legal claim to keep him in prison after he returned to his homeland in 2007.

The chair of the UN committee, Fabian Salvioli, said on Wednesday (Australian time) that the extra seven months Hicks spent in an Australian prison was a "flagrant denial of justice."

Hicks was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and moved to the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba in January 2002, where he remained until the Australian government negotiated a transfer deal which brought him back to his home country in 2007.

After his return, Hicks took a plea bargain admitting to "providing material support for terrorism" in return for a seven-year sentence, most of it suspended.

While Salvioli recognized the importance of transfer deals, he said the Australian government should have revisited the case against Hicks.

"Transfer agreements are important because they allow prisoners convicted abroad to serve their sentences in their own country," Salvioli said.

"But states should not carry out a sentence if there is ample evidence that the trial clearly violated the defendant's rights, as was the case with Mr Hicks."

Following the decision, Hicks' lawyer Stephen Kenny, speaking on behalf of the 40-year-old, told the Australian Associated Press (AAP) that his client had been poorly treated by government officials at the time.

"His treatment was appalling and the Australian government's role in his imprisonment is a serious abuse of an Australian citizen," Kenny said on Wednesday.

The commission echoed Kenny's sentiment, noting Hicks "had no other choice than to accept the terms of the plea agreement that was put to him" due to the treatment - including torture - he received in Guantanamo.

Under the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), countries that don't follow the treaty are "obliged to make full reparations to individuals whose rights have been violated."

But in this case, the UN conceded that Australian government's diplomacy had helped Hicks out of the terrorist camp and away from further harm, and subsequently they did not owe him any damages.

Kenny said the whole experience had ruined Hicks' reputation and no amount of money could fix that.

"It will follow David for the rest of his life and he will suffer as a result of the way he was treated," Kenny said.

Last year, Hicks won an appeal against his terrorism conviction in the U.S. court of military commission review. Endite