Meanwhile, new questions are being raised about the imprisonment of the Australian citizen David Hicks following a plea deal that will see him released from jail by the end of this year. Hicks became the first Guantanamo prisoner convicted under the Military Commissions Act. A military jury recommended the maximum sentence of seven years. But on Friday, the Pentagon revealed it had struck a deal that will see Hicks serve a nine-month prison term, most of it in Australia. Under the deal, Hicks is barred from speaking to reporters and must renounce his claim to have suffered abuse in U.S. custody. Hicks has been held for five years. Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union said: “They told us this was one of the world’s worst terrorists, and he got the sentence of a drunken driver.”