Hicks Will Walk After 9 Months

Australian terror suspect David Hicks will serve just nine months more in detention, the AP reports, despite receiving a seven-year sentence from a military tribunal at Guantánamo yesterday. In an extraordinary plea deal, the rest of the sentence was suspended in exchange for his silence about his treatment during his five years in detention, which became an international issue.

Under the plea deal,  Hicks signed a statement that he "has never been illegally treated" while in captivity and agreed not to sue over that treatment  or "communicate in any way with the media" for a year. Hicks, who trained in an Al  Qaeda camp to fight in Afghanistan, plead guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization. (More Afghanistan stories.)