Man sentenced after planning terrorist attacks on Australian targets

A Sydney man who had “grandiose” plans to commit a terrorist act in Australia before attempting to travel to Pakistan to join Islamic State fighters on the front lines has been sentenced to just over seven years’ jail for the terrorist offences.

Isaac El Matari, now 22, admitted to being a member of Islamic State and pleaded guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to two charges: planning terrorist attacks on Australian soil, and preparing to engage in foreign fighting with the terrorist group in Afghanistan. The maximum penalty for each offence is life in prison.

In March 2019, El Matari went on two shopping trips to a hunting and technical supplies store in St Marys, checking out binoculars and ammunition before purchasing a cream-coloured tactical vest he took home and wore around his apartment building before placing it in a suitcase he intended to take to Pakistan.

Over the course of the following six months, authorities would intercept a number of conversations where he discussed the purchase and importation of firearms, ammunition, tactical clothing and explosives. He also inquired about the locations of potential targets in Australia, including a military barracks.

In one encrypted conversation with someone in Lebanon, El Matari talked about starting “a state out here in the bush”.

He told the person he thought IS supporters in Australia were “cowards and not truly committed” and discussed choosing targets: “I know what targets will make people scared and will make people aware and will convey our message.”

In another conversation, he threatened to blow himself up “to obtain publicity” and “again described, in somewhat vague terms, how acts of terrorism could be carried out in Australia”, Justice Peter Garling said on Monday.

The court heard El Matari had been caught attempting to join Islamic State fighters on a prior trip to Lebanon, and spent nine months in prison there before he was released in June 2018 and returned to Australia.

Justice Garling noted the offender was a “relatively young man” but said the extent of his immaturity was “tempered” by the fact that he had been to Lebanon where he was caught and punished for attempting to join Islamic State forces.

“By the time he returned to Australia … he ought to have learnt his lesson,” Justice Garling said.

On the contrary, even after he was arrested in Australia he was undeterred.

In September 2019, a search of the cell adjacent to his own turned up a three-page letter El Matari had written to his inmate, where he described Australia’s vulnerability to insurgents and proposed using “a small, enclosed battalion to exploit the exposed landscape” while maintaining propaganda-focussed cells hidden among the urban civilian population.

Despite his apparent commitment to the cause, Justice Garling said El Matari “did a lot of talking, and took little action” on his “grandiose ideas”.

“He had only the most generalised of plans … he had no followers, he had not persuaded anyone to his cause in Australia.

“The likelihood of any terrorist act coming to fruition in Aust was very low indeed.”

Justice Garling sentenced El Matari to a maximum seven years and four months in prison, with a non-parole period of five years and six months.

As he heard his fate, El Matari, watching remotely from Goulburn, grinned and covered his face with his hands.

He will be eligible for parole in January 2025.

Source: SMH