David Hicks - Islamic convert adventurer or terrorist?

1.00pm

ADELAIDE - His father calls him Indiana Jones, an adventurer who should have been born a few centuries ago with sword in hand.

The US calls him a terrorist.

Is David Hicks an Islamic convert caught in the wrong place at the wrong time or a deadly operative of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group?

The Adelaide-born former jackaroo and chicken boner dressed in a suit for the first time in his life this week to deny war crimes charges at a US military commission hearing.

Asked how he pleaded to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy, Hicks replied: "To all charges, not guilty".

It was the only comment Hicks made during his hearing, otherwise sitting unemotional through the proceeding.

Hicks' military commission trial will start on January 10, three years after he was initially transferred to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

His lawyers have called for the charges to be dismissed.

Hicks was captured among Taleban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001. The Northern Alliance handed him to American forces.

The 29-year-old says he was abused - hooded and beaten - by his US captors, allegations refuted by a US Department of Defence investigation.

Some say that finding was hardly surprising, given it was the US investigating its own actions - akin, according to Hicks' Australian lawyer Stephen Kenny, of allowing Adolf Hitler investigate claims of abuse in Nazi camps in World War II.

Mr Kenny says preparing a complete defence for Hicks is nigh impossible.

One of the allegations is that Hicks met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden while at a training camp for the terrorist group in Afghanistan and proceeded to translate training material from Arabic to English.

Kenny argues that for Hicks' legal team, headed by US civilian lawyer Josh Dratel and US military lawyer Major Michael Mori, to defend their client they need to cross-examine witnesses.

To disprove Hicks met with bin Laden, Hicks' lawyers argue they need to cross-examine the al-Qaeda leader himself.

The Australian's legal team also say the military commissions - the first staged by the US since World War II - are weighted against the accused and do not meet international standards of law.

They say even if found not guilty of the charges, Hicks can still be detained by the US as an 'enemy combatant'.

The lawyers also say that if found guilty, Hicks' sole avenue of appeal is to the US President.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer maintain the process is just and Hicks will get a fair trial.

They have pledged to press for Hicks to be freed if cleared by the commission.

But how did Hicks, from Adelaide's blue collar northern suburb of Salisbury, find himself in his current predicament of being held at Guantanamo Bay for the past 32 months?

"We call him Indiana Jones, that's his nickname," Hicks' father, Terry Hicks, said, describing his son as an adventurer.

"I've always said he should have been born a few centuries ago with a sword in his hand."

Mr Hicks met with his son for 25 minutes before this week's military commission hearing - the first meeting of father and son for five years.

Hicks dropped out of the Smithfield Plains High School in Adelaide's north when aged 14 in 1990.

Some former classmates describe him as a rebel who experimented with drugs and alcohol and dabbled in Satanism.

He worked briefly as a chicken boner before leaving Adelaide for Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Hicks worked as a jackaroo, rodeo rider and barman in the remote outpost of Borroloola in the NT's Gulf of Carpentaria cattle country, where he met his former de facto, an Aboriginal woman with whom he had two children.

Hicks studied the Koran in Borroloola and later left Australia for Japan, where he worked as a horse trainer.

He then travelled via Adelaide to Kosovo in mid-1999, where he fought alongside ethnic Albanian Muslims in the Kosovo Liberation Army against the Serbs.

Returning to Adelaide, he was fully converted to Islam and then journeyed to Pakistan to further his Islamic studies.

It was in Pakistan he was allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda and sent to Afghanistan, where capture and infamy awaited.

- AAP