Australia to sue ex-Gitmo inmate over book

Australia on Thursday said it was preparing to sue ex-Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks for the royalties from his tell-all book, claiming they should be considered proceeds of crime.

Hicks was captured in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and spent five-and-a-half years in the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay before being convicted by a military commission of providing material support for terrorism.

He returned to Australia in April 2007 and spent nine months in prison completing the commission's sentence before finally being freed, on strict conditions that he report to police and not give interviews for a year.

Now 35 and living in Sydney, Hicks broke his silence last year with an autobiography detailing his time in Guantanamo and the events that led up to his capture. It has reportedly sold 30,000 copies.

"The Director of Public Prosecutions has applied for a restraining order and a literary proceeds order," a government spokeswoman told AFP, adding the case would be heard in the Supreme Court of New South Wales state on August 3.

Formerly an outback cattleman and once dubbed the "Aussie Taliban", Hicks is not permitted to profit from his book under amendments to Australian proceeds of crime law made specifically to recognise his case.

The lawsuit has surprised some legal watchers, who say it will be a test of his conviction by the US Military Commission and could challenge the controversial quasi-judicial system's authority in Australia.

"It may well be that this takes and twists and turns, and may even up possibilities for David Hicks to gain recognition that his offence was not one that should be recognised under Australian law," said constitutional lawyer George Williams.

"He may well (raise) issues going to the nature of his plea, whether duress was involved, whether it was a plea that should be recognised under the Australian legal system, and that could go to quite fundamental questions about the rule of law and the types of proceedings that can be properly recognised under Australian law," Williams told ABC radio.

Williams said he would not be surprised to see the case end up in the nation's top court, High Court, to decide "some quite important matters of principle."

Hicks' publishers Random House declined to comment.