Australia ? Former Guantanamo terror prisoner David Hicks remains a threat and will have to regularly report to police and stay indoors from midnight to dawn when he is released from prison next week, a magistrate ruled today.

Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner who pleaded guilty to supporting al-Qaida at a U.S. military tribunal after being captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, will face strict conditions when he returns to society on Dec. 29 after almost seven years in detention.

The father of two was captured in December 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban, and spent more than five years without trial at Guantanamo Bay.

A U.S. military commission sitting in Guantanamo sentenced Hicks, a Muslim convert, in March to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended after he pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.

Under a plea bargain, Hicks was returned to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence.