ESCORT HOME: A police convoy carrying David Hicks arrives at the Yatala Labour Prison near Adelaide.

Just before 11am yesterday, he was home again ? escorted in the back of a van by motorcycle police, prison officers and a high-security response squad.

In Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, where he was held for almost 5½ years by US authorities who declared him a prisoner in the war on terror, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement.

In Yatala Labour Prison, in Adelaide's northern suburbs, he will also be in a small cell by himself, allowed out for exercise for one hour a day before his release in late December ? possibly in time to be reunited with his family for the New Year.

The dramatic return of the former Taliban fighter and convicted supporter of terrorism was not lost on Hicks, now 31, who landed at the RAAF base at Edinburgh, north of Adelaide, at 9.50am Adelaide time (11.50am NZT) after a secretive 24-hour flight from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

"He did make the rather amusing comment ? there are not too many prisoners who get a world trip between stretches," Hicks' civilian lawyer for the past two years, David McLeod, said.

Hicks was grateful to be a prisoner of the Australian Government, after years as a prisoner of the US Government, a situation that, in the end, embarrassed both governments.

Mr McLeod said Hicks stayed awake for most of the flight, which left the military base on Friday night Cuban time, relishing what was for him his first taste of freedom since he was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 and taken into US custody.

"In the last 5½ years he hasn't walked in a straight line for more than about 10 metres," Mr McLeod said. "Just the actual getting onto a plane and feeling relatively free and being able to talk and enjoy the moment ? he has been very grateful for that."

Hicks could see Adelaide from the air and seemed elated to be home.

"I can only talk about the look on his face, and it was a clear look of relief, joy, that he was back in the land of his countrymen," Mr McLeod said. "Something that should have happened a long time ago." Mr McLeod portrayed Hicks as a repentant, co-operative prisoner interested in ecology, zoology and the environment. That was one image. The South Australian Government presented another ? condemning him as consort of Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda, warning against giving him hero status or treating him as a celebrity.

"David Hicks is a very foolish young man at best, an extremely dangerous man at worst," Deputy Premier Kevin Foley said. "He should be seen for what he is, someone who chose to openly assist al-Qaeda and terrorists to do great damage to people in the West." The Federal Government, which faced an intense public and political campaign to bring the Australian citizen home to serve time, was also insisting that the former jackaroo and father of two remained a security risk.

"This is somebody who was not just passing through Afghanistan on a backpacker's holiday and happened to meet someone from al-Qaeda and just said g'day to him," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. "This is someone who was actively involved in al-Qaeda."

The South Australian Government wants a control order placed on Hicks to monitor his movements after his release, expected on December 29.

The Australian Federal Police is yet to confirm whether it would seek an order, but indicated that discussions were under way to ensure community safety.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock reiterated that a US requirement that Hicks not talk about his detention for at least 12 months was unenforceable, although Australian law meant he could not profit by his crimes. "We are of the view that he is free, once he's concluded his penal servitude, to speak as he wishes but not to profit," he said.

Mr Foley said both the state and federal governments would introduce legislation if there was any possibility of Hicks selling his story.

But Mr McLeod ruled out Hicks profiting from his crimes, at least for another 10 months. He said Hicks may want to talk about his experience in the future but for now he wanted to put the past behind him and would respect the gag order agreed to as part of a plea deal.

"He simply wants to get on with his life," Mr McLeod said. "He has no intention of selling his story or profiting in any way from his story. He wants to be accepted back in Australia as an ordinary citizen."

He would not speculate on whether Hicks could evade the gag by speaking through his father. "I think ultimately he may want to tell his story but he doesn't want to in the next year," he said.

He defended Hicks as a person who had come back to Australia to do his time and wanted to put the past behind him. "He is aware of his notoriety," he said. "He is not proud of his notoriety."

Hicks, who returned wearing vivid orange-red Yatala prison clothing issued to him at Guantanamo Bay, was able to relax on the flight and was treated kindly by the officers on board.

"He watched a movie for the first time in 5½ years," said Mr McLeod.

Hicks was escorted back by two prison officers, two AFP officers and a medical officer.

He was restrained but Mr McLeod would not confirm if he was handcuffed. "He was restrained in his seat," he said. "It was quite a flexible arrangement that didn't worry him."

Once off the plane, Hicks was cleared through customs and taken to Yatala, where was showered, searched and entered the system with a "high 1A" maximum-security rating.

He will be in the high-security G division of Yatala prison in accordance with national guidelines for prisoners who present a risk to national security.

The prison will establish a profile of Hicks within 48 hours, which should clear the way for a visit next weekend from his family, including his father, Terry Hicks.

"But after how long we've waited, what's another week," said Terry Hicks, who waged a concerted campaign for his son.

Only non-contact visits will be permitted, and all communication other than with his lawyer will be monitored.

Hicks yesterday abandoned all outstanding legal action, including a Federal Court challenge to the Federal Government over the exercise of its duty of citzenship, and an appeal in the UK contesting its revocation of his British citizenship.

As part of the legal appeal, Hicks' lawyers filed an affidavit in which Hicks detailed alleged physical and mental abuse by the US military in the time after he was taken prisoner by the US and before he arrived at Guantanamo Bay. By dropping the action, Hicks withdraws the claims of abuse.

"David wants the Australian public to know he does not plan to launch any challenge to his ongoing incarceration here in Australia, and that he has instructed me to discontinue all current court actions," Mr McLeod said. "All he wants to do now is to become a regular prisoner."

Mr McLeod said Hicks was heavily institutionalised after his time in Guantanamo Bay, and he would access social welfare, psychological and educational facilities Yatala had to offer.

"It is fair to say that after 5½ years in the Western world's most notorious prison, he has become institutionalised," he said, without detailing Hicks' symptoms.

David Hicks will spend the next nine months at Yatala Labour Prison, Adelaide's maximum security jail and home to South Australia's toughest criminals.

The confessed terrorism supporter was transferred on Sunday to the prison after flying in from Guantanamo Bay to Edinburgh RAAF base in Adelaide's outer northern suburbs at 9.50am (CST).

A convoy of seven vehicles drove Hicks straight through the jail's gates and into the prison compound about 10.40am (CST).

A crowd of about 20 curious onlookers and a large media contingent watched from outside the prison walls.

Inside the jail, Hicks will be strip-searched and examined before being moved to solitary confinement.

Hicks' infamous orange jumpsuit, given to him at the Guantanamo Bay military prison and worn on the flight, will be exchanged for standard-issue prison clothes.

He will be assigned to a cell in the prison's Division G, reserved for the state's toughest criminals including the Snowtown "bodies in barrels" convicted murderers John Bunting and Robert Wagner.

Prison guards will constantly supervise the 31-year-old Muslim convert who is expected to remain locked inside his two-metre by four-metre cell for 23 hours a day.

But for a man who has been held in far worse conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Yatala jail may seen like luxury.

The San Francisco Chronicle in an editorial earlier this year described Guantanamo as "America's best known dungeon" and a "tropical purgatory", while Amnesty International labelled it as the "gulag of our times".

When Hicks was first detained at the US military base in January 2002, a month after he was captured among Taliban forces in Afghanistan, he was held in a makeshift wire cage in Camp X-Ray.

During that time, Hicks' lawyers complained that the former Adelaide man had been tortured by prison officers - claims rejected by US and Australian authorities.

Hicks also withdrew the accusations in his guilty plea deal signed with US prosecutors in March.

Hicks' most recent home in Guantanamo before returning to Australia was at Camp 6, a large newly built white maximum security prison in Cuba.

His cell there was a sparse 7.4 square metre room with no window to the outside world and a concrete slab for a bed, lined with a thin foam mat.

He will face similar accommodation at Yatala but the smell of freedom around the corner may make the next nine months the easiest of Hicks' more than five years in detention.

In March, Hicks was sentenced to a total of seven years jail, with all but nine months suspended.

He will serve the remainder of those nine months at Yatala.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock is the Minister who has had the carriage of much of the David Hicks saga along the way. It fell to him to sign the papers officially handing over custodial responsibility from the United States to Australia.

Transcript

BARRIE CASSIDY: And now to the Minister who has had the carriage of much of the David Hicks saga along the way, the Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. It fell to him to sign the papers officially handing over custodial responsibility from the United States to Australia. He joins us now from Sydney.

(to Philip Ruddock) Minister, good morning.

PHILIP RUDDOCK, FEDERAL ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Morning Barrie.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Do you attach any special significance to this day, to the event, to the return of David Hicks to Australia?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, it's part of a process and he is a prisoner being transferred back to Australia to serve out a sentence, and that will happen.

BARRIE CASSIDY: A bit more though than just a prisoner because there's obviously a lot of media interest in this, and to an extent, isn't the Government to blame for that because the lack of action, the lack of concern for so long elevated David Hicks to the story that it is today?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, it's interesting if you read Leigh Sales' book, I think you'll understand that the government was very active in trying to get resolution for this matter, well in advance of perhaps the public recognition that that activity was occurring.

BARRIE CASSIDY: He pleaded guilty of course, so how would you describe him? Would you describe him as a dangerous person, a menace, or is he a deluded person?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, really I don't know, and I can't form a personal view in relation to those matters. What I can say is that the offences for which he has been convicted are now offences under our law.

In other words, if people train with terrorist organisations - and that is training to learn how to attack civilian populations and use weapons, the logistics and so on in relation to mounting terrorist attacks, and all of this was part and parcel of the activity in which he was engaged - those matters are offences under our law, they carry penalties of up to 25 years penal servitude.

We regard them as very serious issues, and when somebody has been convicted by way of his own plea of guilty of those types of offences, you're dealing with a person about whom we have to be obviously quite concerned.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah, I think all that's a given. But if he'd been innocent, he would have gone through the same process. An innocent man would have been held at Guantanamo Bay without trial for five years.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: And the fact is that there are people held in our legal system, very long periods of time as they explore the limits of the law to test the lawfulness of the process under which they are being dealt with, and sometimes those procedures take a long time.

One of the points I've made frequently about the process in the United States is that he was availing himself of the opportunity to test matters in the American legal system, and that system was capable of making independent judgments about those questions.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But even allowing for that, you couldn't point to a case in the courts in Australia where somebody had been denied a trial for five years?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I can talk about a situation in which a person in Australia was detained in jail until he was finally convicted, and that period took five years, yes.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So, if you had your time over again, would you have done anything differently?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well look, in relation to these issues, I might have wanted to make it perhaps better known and the level of concern that the Government had and the way in which we were continuously making representations to the United States to bring the process of dealing with him forward.

But it was important to look at the initial period. Their focus in the United States after September 11 was identifying people who they believed had been involved in planning terrorist attacks. They wanted to get them out of the way, they put them in Guantanamo Bay.

It took something like two years before they decided to set up the military commission process. That process was challenged right up to the Supreme Court. There was some technical flaws in relation to it, they had to legislate again, they did.

And all of those processes took time. We would have liked to have seen it happen much earlier. We complained frequently about it.

BARRIE CASSIDY: In the end though, do you think the whole image of Guantanamo Bay simply served as a recruitment tool for terrorists?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I don't believe so. I think in these matters … I mean the idea that we are responsible for terrorism, by our responses to terrorists acts, I think distorts the arguments very considerably.

I don't believe we're in any way responsible for the fact that there is an organisation like Al Qaeda that sees the killing and targeting of innocent civilians in pursuit of whatever objectives it has as being appropriate.

It's … there is no way that you can simply lie over and hope that if people have trained something like 10,000 or more people to engage in acts of these kinds - and that's what Al Qaeda was doing before September 11 - that you can ignore it. You do so at your peril.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But even so if you get the concept of the military commission, if you get it wrong first time around, and yet only the conventional courts have convicted people of terrorism, then it doesn't help the court surely?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, military commissions were known to the American justice system over a long period of time. I think it’s been derided quite significantly by those who are not familiar with it.

But one of the points I've made about that system is that the Americans treat their military justice system very seriously. It is part of their system of law. People like Major Mori participate in defending people and nobody could complain about the way in which he as a military officer - who believes in that military justice system, participated in it - and I think to bring into question the motives of others who have a proper role to play has been very unfair to that system.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What happens to David Hicks now beyond this year? Obviously there will be some sort of surveillance, but is it now the responsibility of the Federal Police to apply to you as the Attorney-General if they want a control order?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Controls orders are sought by the Australian Federal Police. I have a role in relation to that process, so I won't comment on whether or not it would be appropriate. They produce the evidence that they think justifies a control order.

If consent is given for them to apply, it goes before a judicial officer and a judicial officer ultimately determines whether or not it would be granted. So, I don't know whether or not the Australian Federal Police would seek a control order.

What I do know is that they couldn't do so until Mr Hicks is within the Australian jurisdiction, and so it would be quite inappropriate to be contemplating that up until now.

BARRIE CASSIDY: If a control order is granted down the track, to what extent would that limit his ability to move around?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, you have to look at the one control order that has been granted if you want to get an idea of the sort of measures that the police believe are appropriate, and they go to a requirement that you live in a particular place, they go to reporting issues, they go to whom you can contact, they go to the numbers of telephones you might have and requirement to provide information about the numbers that are made available to you.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What about Jack Roche? He is out after serving four-and-a-half years for plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy, is he going to be the subject of a control order?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, the point I made about Roche is that he's subject to parole. And there are conditions associated with that parole. He has been subjected to the normal parole conditions in Western Australia, and in addition to that there were requirements identified by the Australian Federal Police, which I haven't detailed and won't be detailed, but we're part of the parole arrangements.

BARRIE CASSIDY: The West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty said - fairly obviously I would have thought - that many terrorists are unhinged, and he said that he hopes that the federal authorities will protect the community. Are you satisfied the community will be protected?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: What I am satisfied is that the justice system has worked as intended - a person went before a court, was convicted, he was given a period of sentence which included a nonparole period. There was provision for parole, he has been paroled under conditions which require supervision and there are additional conditions that have been imposed at the request of the Australian Federal Police, and of course the purpose of those is to ensure the safety of the Australian community.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Now you're obviously satisfied that the law allows you to stop David Hicks from making a profit from his story. He nevertheless beyond this year is able to tell his story, and then sell it for charity?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, he's free to tell his story. And I've made the point that while there were conditions imposed as part of the plea bargain, they were matters between him and the United States, they don't involve us.

And I don't believe there is a basis upon which if he breached those conditions - that is if he told aspects of his experience, that we would be … we would be delivering him up because of that, and I mean that's the bottom line.

I mean we are of the view that he is free once he has concluded his penal servitude to speak as he wishes, but not to profit, and the position is quite clear. People who commit serious criminal offences should not be able to profit from those matters by writing about them after they've been released.

BARRIE CASSIDY: I just want to ask you about the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) conference in Sydney in September. Is this going to be the biggest security operation that this country has seen?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, it will be comparable to many that we have seen: the Sydney Olympics, the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, the CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting), the Commonwealth leaders conference that took place in the Sunshine Coast.

But 21 national leaders from the United States, China, Russia, there are people who …. whose security concerns are of a major importance and that makes it a situation where we have to put a lot of effort in.

And the Commonwealth has I think, in relation to the APEC leaders' conference committed something of the order of $169 million to the running of it and the security arrangement. I think $78 million has been provided to the New South Wales Police who will have the primary operational concerns to ensure that it is a safe event.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And I presume there are all sorts of dry runs going on at the moment to test the system?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: There are and that is appropriate. The … I mean Scotland Yard said after the London bombings that the most important aspect of their experience was the extent to which they had exercised before that tragedy occurred and knew their roles and responses, and we've been doing that.

We had a major exercise, Blue Luminary, which has taken place in two tranches, a two week exercise which involved a lot of desk programs with all of the officers who would be undertaking the various responsibilities, right through to senior members of the Cabinet and the National Security Committee, a meeting that took place on Thursday this week.

It was a very important part of the process to ensure that we all know what our responsibilities would be against a range of scenarios.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So, as they go through that process do they test the snap judgments of the Attorney General?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, it is a process in which we go through what our particular roles would be and if there…

BARRIE CASSIDY: How did you fare?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I guess there will be a debriefing later, and I might even be told about it. But at this stage there wasn't an off the cuff judgment.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Ok, obviously you're recontesting your seat at the next election, you still feel you have something to offer?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, I am very strongly of the view that you should only be in public life if you believe you can make a difference and if you'd like me to spend another 10 minutes on the program, I'll take you through the measures that I've been implementing in relation to family law, the harmonisation of laws, the new measures that we're putting in place with personal securities.

BARRIE CASSIDY: I'm sure you've explained that to the preselection committee already. But if the Coalition loses, will you serve out the full term in Opposition?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, my view is you should. But I'm not hypothesising what may or may not happen. I believe that I can make a positive contribution. I've always put that in the hands of the leader, the Prime Minister, to determine if we're in government and equally if we're in opposition, I would offer myself to serve in the best interests of the party.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Thanks for your time this morning.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Pleasure.