Australian's path to Islamic jihad

ADELAIDE, Australia - When young Australian David Hicks got an offer from a Saudi friend to go to Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan in December 2000, he did not think twice.

"So many of today's Muslims want to meet bin Laden but cannot, and after only being Muslim for 16 months Allah has given me the chance to," he gushingly wrote to his mother. "Please don't worry."

Within six months, Hicks - who took the name Mohammad Dawood - had met bin Laden at least 20 times and was full of praise for the al-Qaeda leader.

"Lovely brother, everything only for the sake of Islam," Hicks wrote to his mother in May 2001. "Only reason non-Muslims call him the most wanted terrorist is because he has the money to take action, which was given to him by Allah."

Hicks' account of his journey from a working-class background in the central Australian city of Adelaide to Islamic jihad was made public last month for the first time.

He was the first person convicted before a U.S. military tribunal at Guantanamo, and is now free in Australia after seven years in captivity for supporting terrorism.

Hicks is barred under a plea deal from speaking publicly. But Federal Magistrate Warren Donald released his letters and a diary in court to back his ruling that Hicks is still a terror threat and that his movements must be curbed.

While the documents are at least seven years old, they offer firsthand, detailed descriptions of the intensive training undergone by would-be terrorists, as well as insight into the mind of a convert to extremist Islam.

In the papers, the Australian comes across as an eager foot soldier and a naive adventurer.

Hicks, now 32, converted to Islam in 1999 after watching TV reports of the conflict in the Balkans. He went to Albania to join the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Muslim group fighting against Serbian forces, but when he got there the conflict was over.

He then trained in Pakistan with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group fighting to pry loose Muslim-dominated Kashmir from India.

He sent home a notebook filled with details and diagrams on how to use numerous weapons, including mortars, ballistic missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and machine guns. He also learned how to carry out attacks against heavily guarded targets and blow up a tank.

"The training was very intense. Extreme fitness, which I gave up smoking, military tactics and technics, religious knowledge and weapons training," he wrote to his family in August 2000, misspelling

techniques

.

Hicks became disillusioned with Pakistan as not Islamic enough and in 2000 traveled to Afghanistan, which he revered as a model Islamic country.

But he returned to Pakistan four days later after some Taliban members held a knife to his throat when he criticized their actions. He later described the leaders as "war-hungry, blood-hungry idiots."

Back in Islamic school in Pakistan, he got an offer of help from some Arab friends to get into bin Laden's camps. He immediately agreed.

"Not for fighting. For training, plus I will continue my Quran under their teaching and improve upon my Arabic," he wrote to his mother at the end of 2000.

By May 2001, Hicks appeared entranced by his time at the camps, and even came to respect the Taliban again as "the only true strong Islamic group in the world succeeding." He gave his mother - who also converted to Islam - a phone number to reach him, but warned her to use his pseudonym, Abu Hakeem.

"Non-Muslims send a lot of spies here, especially to Osama bin Laden's Arab organization, which is where I am. They gather information on people, and if you leave the country you get arrested by America or others," he wrote.

But things were improving, he said. "Today it's not so much problem," he wrote. "The Arabs have established security."

In December 2001, Hicks was captured among the Taliban by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and handed to U.S. forces. He was sent to Guantanamo.