John Howard's government made an early decision to formally declare Australian citizen David Hicks was being lawfully detained at Guantanamo Bay.
At the same time, the cabinet also agreed to allow the US investigative and legal processes to be completed before settling any Australian options.
The cabinet decisions, revealed in freshly released papers from 2002, were to be crucial in terms of Hicks' future.
But 20 years on, former minister Amanda Vanstone stands by the call.
"Australians are very apprehensive about terrorism," the former Liberal senator said at a media briefing on the cabinet papers.
"If you've been found to have participated in training overseas with a terrorist organisation, I think it's perfectly understandable that ... you get charged and get imprisoned."
She said it was important those imprisoned overseas received "appropriate treatment".
"But we cannot say to other countries 'we do not like your law applied to our person and we want you to give him back' - I just don't think that's how it works."
Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001.
He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he was detained by the US military as an "enemy combatant".
After almost three years in isolated detention, Hicks was charged with conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy and was committed to face trial before a presidentially ordered military commission.
But before the trial could proceed, the US Supreme Court found the military commission system was unlawful.
He was left in detention without charge and with no prospect of release.
In late 2006, the military commission system was re-established and in early 2007 Hicks was again charged and committed to face trial.
Hicks pleaded guilty in March 2007, pursuant to a pre-trial agreement, to a single charge of "providing material support for terrorism".
A month later, he returned to Australia to serve the remaining nine months of his suspended seven-year sentence.
He was released in December 2007, but was placed under a 12-month control order.
But in February 2015, the US Court of Military Commission review set aside the guilty plea and sentence, and vacated Hicks' sentence - 13 years on from the Howard cabinet decision.
The released cabinet papers show ministers in 2002 settled on "the need to agree consistent public positions by both the Australian and US governments concerning future actions in relation to Mr Hicks".
The cabinet noted Australian authorities were examining whether Hicks had breached Australian law during his activities in Kosovo, Kashmir or Afghanistan, seeking information from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The cabinet further agreed the attorney-general consider a means of ensuring there was a legislative basis for preventing Mr Hicks from profiting from any publication of his account, whether in the proceeds of crime bill or in other legislation.
Historian David Lee said the jailing of Hicks would later prove to be "the source of acute embarrassment to the Howard government" on the eve of the 2007 election, which Labor won.
The Law Council of Australia at the time was highly critical of the government's acquiescence of Hicks' detention without charge and the inability of Hicks to effectively challenge the legality of his detention.
It also criticised the unjust rules of military commissions.
