Australian David Hicks unexpectedly pleaded guilty last night to a charge of helping al-Qaeda fight US troops and their allies during the invasion of Afghanistan.
Hicks is the first prisoner to face the new US war crimes tribunals. The tribunals were created by Congress after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier version that President Bush authorised to try foreign captives on terrorism charges.
Australian David Hicks before he traveled to Afghanistan
Hicks has been held at Guantanamo for more than five years. He could learn his sentence by the end of the week and could be back in Australia by the end of the year, said the chief prosecutor for the tribunals, Air Force Colonel Moe Davis.
Hicks (31) had faced life imprisonment if convicted on the charge of providing material support for terrorism.
Under a long-standing diplomatic agreement, Hicks will serve his sentence in Australia.
His guilty plea will bring a more lenient sentence, and the judge ordered the prosecutors and defence lawyers to draw up a plea agreement by this afternoon.
He will admit to only some of the allegations in the broadly written charge, which accused him of attending al-Qaeda training camps, conducting surveillance on the US embassy in Kabul, taking up arms to guard a Taliban tank, and fighting against US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.
He was captured there in December 2001 and sent to Guantanamo a month later.
Hicks is the first of the 385 Guantanamo prisoners to be charged.