Lawyer
Stephen Kenny told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday that
Hicks’ legal team has been told that the US government admitted that his
conviction in 2013 was not valid.
"We
have no doubts that the Military Commission ... will make a ruling now that
David Hicks' conviction should be set aside," he said.
Kerry
said he expected a US military commission to respond to the appeal within a
month.
The
Pentagon however declined to comment directly on the lawyer’s statement,
arguing that any developments in the case are a matter for the military court.
"The
government will make additional responses through court filings," said
Pentagon spokesman, Army Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins.
Hicks,
now 38 and free in Australia, pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing
"material support for terrorism."
His
legal team, however, said that he did so under pressure and filed an appeal in
a bid to get out of Guantanamo in late 2013, at the time when he was despondent
and suicidal.
Hicks
was among the first group of prisoners sent to Guantanamo a year after being
arrested in Afghanistan in December 2001.
He
was tortured, threatened with violence, deprived of sleep for long periods and
sexually assaulted during his time at the prison, his lawyers said.
Should
Hicks loses in the military appeals court, he could appeal to a federal appeals
court and the US Supreme Court.
The
Guantanamo Bay prison at the US naval base in Cuba was opened in January 2002
to hold terror suspects captured during the so-called war on terror.
During
his sixth State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Barack Obama once
again promised to shut down the prison. He had promised to close the prison
before his election in 2008.
Some
122 people are still imprisoned in the prison. PressTV,
23 January 2015.
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