Gitmo detainee's plea deal angers some legal experts

Australian detainee David Hicks, whom prosecutors cast as a highly trained and dangerous Al Qaeda operative, will be out of prison before the year ends because of a secret deal cut by the Bush administration appointee overseeing the military commissions.

The jury went through the motions: The panel of senior military officers flew in from around the world, deliberated for two hours and sentenced Hicks — who had entered a guilty plea — to what they'd been told was the maximum term of seven years.

But the person overseeing the tribunals, veteran Defense Department lawyer Susan J. Crawford, had bypassed the prosecution and cut a pretrial deal directly with the defense to suspend all but nine months of any sentence rendered in exchange for the guilty plea.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is one of Washington's closest allies in the war on terrorism, and his Liberal Party had been flagging in this election year because of public resentment of Hicks' being held without charges at Guantanamo for more than five years.

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