According to a Melbourne taxi driver who received money from Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden had a softer, huggable side. Thomas: Osama didn’t mind hugs.

But no kissing, please.

The former Melbourne taxi driver convicted this week of receiving cash from al-Qaeda has told of his meetings with Osama bin Laden, and how the world’s most-wanted man had a softer side.

“You know, he didn’t mind being hugged, but kisses he didn’t like,” says Jack Thomas, the 32-year-old Werribee father of three who trained under the al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan just months before the September 11, 2001, strike on the United States.

Thomas, who was also found guilty of passport fraud but acquitted of two other terrorism-related charges, was asked of his impression of bin Laden during an interview aired on ABC’s Four Corners program on Monday night.

The Muslim convert says bin Laden is “very polite, and humble and shy … and he was just, seemed to float, really float across the floor”.

Thomas also details his meeting with fellow Australian, Guantanamo Bay detainee and alleged terrorist David Hicks, whom he described as a “really good bloke”.

He said the pair met in al-Qaeda’s Camp Faruq training facility, but lost contact when they were dispatched to the frontline to join the Taliban in the fight against the Northern Alliance.

“He’s a real, you know, blue singlet wearing Aussie,” Thomas says of Hicks.

“He actually snuck through the trenches … came down across the river, across the valley … to the back of our tent.

”And he had these chocolates with him, that were like contraband at the time.”