David Hicks faces court in SA over assault

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee and terror suspect David Hicks has faced court in Adelaide charged with assaulting his partner.

Hicks, who spent five years in the US prison camp, appeared in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court on Tuesday over an assault charge.

He is accused of assaulting his partner at Craigmore in September 2016. He did not enter a plea and his case was adjourned to February 28.

The magistrate did not allow journalists inside the court for the pre-trial conference.

"I'm here to see my dad. He works here," he told reporters as he arrived at court wearing jeans and a grey, collared shirt.

The Adelaide-born 41-year-old married human rights activist Aloysia Brooks after his release from prison but the couple has since split and the alleged assault victim is another woman.

Hicks was picked up in 2001 by US forces in Afghanistan, where he joined an al-Qaeda training camp, and detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba until 2006.

He pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing material support for terrorism in a deal that allowed most of his seven-year sentence to be suspended and for him to return to Australia.

The terrorism conviction was appealed in 2013 and overturned by a US military court in 2014, bringing an end to the long legal saga.