Leopold, who has not released the documents, says he has been told that Mr Howard not only pushed for a war crimes-related charge against Hicks but refused a US government offer to have him sent home so Australia could deal with him instead. Colonel Davis has maintained there was political interference in the charge against Hicks, which he says any reasonable person would see as a ''favour for an ally''. The Sun-Herald sent Mr Howard detailed questions but he has refused to comment on any of the claims. The United Nations is investigating the Hicks case after receiving a complaint from an Australian human rights barrister, Ben Saul, that Mr Howard negotiated directly with Mr Cheney to rapidly dispose of the Hicks case because of domestic political pressure. Hicks was apprehended in 2001, during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, by the Northern Alliance and sold to the US military. He was sent to Guantanamo Bay where he was held for 5½ years before being returned to Australia. He pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing material support for terrorism, a charge which had not previously existed. He has maintained he was coerced into accepting a plea deal, afraid that, if he didn't, he would never be released.

Colonel Davis said Hicks had been a good candidate to be transferred back to his home country - without charge - like dozens of others held in Cuba. He came to the conclusion that there was political interference in the case soon after he received an urgent phone call from the Pentagon General Counsel, William 'Jim' Haynes, who had asked him: ''How quickly can you charge David Hicks?'' ''I knew for John Howard it was becoming a political liability with an election coming up,'' Colonel Davis said. That was the first and only time Mr Haynes had ever called him about a specific case and he found it to be ''odd''. The eventual plea bargain was negotiated behind his back, Colonel Davis said. The deal, referred to as an Alford plea, involved Hicks agreeing to the charge of providing material support, which was not a war crime prior to the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It meant that Hicks did not admit to the act he was being charged with, but did admit that the prosecution could probably prove it. Ben Saul, who is professor of international law at the University of Sydney, has made a 107-page submission to the UN Human Rights Committee, arguing that Hicks's imprisonment in Australia - for seven months after his return from Guantanamo Bay - was an illegal, retrospective punishment, his trial was unfair, and that his plea agreement was obtained under duress. Hicks is also preparing to have his first day in court, defending an action by the Australian government to seize, as proceeds of crime, the royalties from his book Guantanamo: my journey.

Colonel Davis, who has quit the military and is now executive director of the Crimes of War Education Project, said that as Mr Howard was one of the US's few allies it ''made sense'' that the charge was to help him by making the Hicks case go away. Loading Colonel Davis said Hicks had made a conscious decision to go and fight in Afghanistan, ''but he was no Khaled Sheik Mohammed or Osama Bin Laden - he was a foot soldier''. ''Traditionally war crimes have been typically prosecuted against the leaders … not the rank-and-file soldier,'' Colonel Davis said.