Search results

Mr. Shazib Khan was found guilty by a jury verdict for planning to travel to Syria and join Islamic State in Levant, a terrorist organisation. In preparation for the travel, Mr. Khan had purchased items for use in Syria and he had also expressed his desire for martyrdom to others who had previously joined ISIL. His case was heard alongside that of his older nephew, Mr. Junead Khan, and he was later sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment.

On 26 August 2016, the Larmond brothers and Suliman Mohamed pleaded guilty to terrorist offences related to the Islamic State and Syria. They had planned to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State and had attempted this travel on several occasions. One of the twin brothers, Ashton Larmond, was the group’s leader and had previously had his passport revoked prior to heading to Syria via Turkey. His twin brother, Carlos Larmond, was arrested at the airport on his way to Syria, via India. Suliman Mohamed had planned to travel to Syria but had not been able to obtain a passport. In their sentencing remarks, Judge McKinnon compared home grown terrorists, such as the defendants, to “a particularly virulent form of cancer that must be aggressively eradicated”. Ashton was sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment, and Carlos and Suliman were both sentenced to 7 years’ imprisonment. 

On 1 September 2016, Sydneysider Hamdi Alqudsi was sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 6 years, for his involvement in assisting seven fighters to travel to the conflict in Syria. Mr. Alqudsi was convicted by a jury on 12 July 2016 after attempting to argue that he was trying to save lives in Syria. Ultimately, it was found through intercepted communications that he was well aware of what the fighters he helped get to Syria and the Islamic State were doing there. Moreover, Judge Adamson acknowledged that he had been a key player in the movement of fighters from Australia to Syria as he linked those who wanted to travel with another fighter who was already there and had joined a jihadi group. 

On 29 September 2016, Amin Mohamed was sentenced by an Australian court to 5,5 years’ imprisonment for attempting to travel to Syria and fight there. Mr. Mohamed, a New Zealander, was convicted by a jury in October 2016 for booking flights to Turkey, and receiving the contact details of a man who would assist him (and others) getting from Turkey to Syria with the intention of fighting in the ongoing armed conflict there. In this venture, Mr. Mohamed had been assisted by Hamdi Alqudsi, another man convicted earlier in 2016 for assisting seven would-be foreign fighters with travel to Syria. Mr. Mohamed was prevented from undertaking this travel in September 2013 due to the revocation of his passport and will likely face deportation to New Zealand at the end of his imprisonment.

Mr. Roy M. Belfast, Jr. (“Charles Taylor Jr.”), the first individual to be prosecuted under the Torture Act and the son of Former Liberian President and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor, was arrested and indicted in Florida, U.S., in December 2006 following a joint Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) / Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation.

In the indictment, Belfast was charged for his role in numerous acts of torture and other atrocities in Liberia between 1999 and 2003 while he was the commander of the States Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU). After hearing evidence from multiple witnesses describing the torture that the defendant had subjected them to, a jury convicted him on all counts and he was sentenced to 97 years in prison.

In 2010, he appealed that conviction before the United States Eleventh Circuit, arguing that Congress impermissibly expanded the prohibitions of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) through the Torture Act and that the Torture Act and U.S. firearms Statutes, under which he was convicted, could not apply to acts committed in Liberia before Liberia became a State Party to the CAT.

The Court rejected all of his arguments and upheld the conviction, finding that the U.S. Torture Act validly enacted CAT and he was convicted in line with the Constitution.