By Sid Astbury

Sydney, March 27 (DPA) The 10 lawyers on David Hicks' defence team are expected to argue at an arraignment hearing before a US war crimes tribunal in Cuba this week that the charge against Australia's Guantanamo Bay detainee is invalid because it was imposed on him retrospectively almost five years after he was captured in Afghanistan.

They might reflect on the fact that had US authorities been quicker in bringing him to justice, the 31-year-old Muslim convert wouldn't be the media darling he is today and there wouldn't be such a clamour back in Australia to have him freed.

Even the staunch supporter of the US-declared war on terrorism, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who had just been re-elected for a third term when Hicks was picked up in a taxi while fleeing the Taliban front in December 2001, said he thinks it's wrong that the former kangaroo skinner has been in limbo so long.

"The fact that he's been five years without trial does trouble us a great deal," Howard said earlier this month after US authorities announced Hicks would be the first defendant to come before a reconstituted military commission.

Time and his prolonged imprisonment might have aged and worn Hicks down, but five years in jail has also served to turn him in many minds from traitor to hero. If Howard fails in his bid for a fifth four-year term at the end of this year, Hicks will have played some role in his downfall.

When Hicks entered Guantanamo in January 2002, then-Australian attorney general Daryl Williams made him out to be "as dangerous as a person can be in modern times."

There was little sympathy for a former drug addict and car thief who allied himself with Al Qaeda in its quest to destroy the West. But as the years rolled by, sentiment toward Hicks changed. About three-quarters of respondents now tell pollsters they want Hicks home.

The government failed to stop the David train from gaining traction. The opposition Labour Party saw a weakness and now campaigns for his release, pointing out that Britain and other US allies have insisted on repatriation for their Guantanamo detainees.

At first, the Australian government stood pat. It wouldn't pass retrospective legislation so Hicks could be tried in Australia and it wouldn't demand he be repatriated.

Then it began to relent. It demanded that Hicks would not be up for a death sentence and any jail term would be served in Australia.

Belatedly, the government ordered consular visits to counter claims that it didn't care about Hicks.

"If there's fresh information that somebody can bring forward - rather than a sort of Labour Party rant about being mean to Al Qaeda - then we're obviously happy to investigate it," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

"We're arguing for Hicks to be well-treated."

This week, Terry Hicks will have the first meeting with his son since 2004. The government is paying for him to attend the Guantanamo Bay tribunal.

"It will be interesting to see how he is physically and mentally," the elder Hicks said before boarding a flight on the way to Cuba. More telling will be whether the prisoner will be of a mind to accept a plea bargain that might see him be put on a plane home either as a free man or as an inmate who would serve his remaining sentence in Australia.

Howard would like Hicks home before he calls a general election at the end of the year. Those who see Hicks as an electoral liability for Howard harbour mixed feelings.

Although most would understand if Hicks would agree to anything to get himself out of Guantanamo, some would see huge political capital in Hicks fighting and winning his court battle.

A high-school dropout who abandoned his wife and children to venture abroad and train with Al Qaeda has become a pivotal figure in Australian politics. It is not a status he would have achieved if the Howard government had followed the cue of other governments and brought its citizens home as soon as it could.