CANBERRA, 1 September 2004 — An Australian Al-Qaeda suspect suffered 10-hour beatings when he was captured by the United States in Afghanistan, his father said yesterday after returning from the US naval base in Cuba where his son is being held.

Terry Hicks’s son David, a 29-year-old Islam convert arrested in late 2001 during the US-led war in Afghanistan, was among the first group of four Al-Qaeda suspects held at Guantanamo Bay to face a US military tribunal last week.

Hicks saw his son for the first time in five years when he was granted two brief private meetings last week.

“He had two lots of 10-hour beatings in Afghanistan,” Terry Hicks told Australian radio.

“I asked him if he knew who it was and he said yes. They were Americans, they were speaking with American accents, and I asked him if he was sure of that. He said most definitely.”

A US panel said last week it found no evidence David Hicks and another Australian Al-Qaeda suspect, Mamdouh Habib, had been abused by their American captors.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the inquiry by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s office had examined the medical records of David Hicks and Habib and other documents after the pair said they had been mistreated.

“They say that they have had this inquiry into these abuses and they have found nothing,” Hicks said.

“And yet here was David, just blurting everything out to us, you know, he just wanted to get it off his chest and he was quite stressed when he was telling us about this, so he wasn’t lying.”

Hicks has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, aiding the enemy and conspiracy to commit war crimes and was set down for trial on Jan. 10.

Egyptian-born Habib, a father-of-four in his late-40s, was arrested crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and has been named as part of a second group of Guantanamo Bay detainees who will be charged. A second investigation into the abuse claims, conducted by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Services, is due to be completed soon.

Australia’s conservative government, a close US ally, came under fire from the nation’s main opposition Labor party for not pressing harder for the release of Hicks and Habib.

The government instead came to an agreement with the United States that allows Hicks and Habib access to a lawyer, would not see them subjected to the death penalty which Australia opposes, and allows them to serve any jail term in Australia if convicted.