Melbourne Islamic State terrorist Adam Brookman released from jail nine months earlier

A nurse and father-of-five convicted of a terrorist-related offence has been released from jail early under an ‘outrageous’ Victorian government policy that grants leniency to prisoners who served time during the coronavirus.

Adam Brookman, 45, from Melbourne had already served 2,161 days in custody after being arrested for supporting Chechen fighters in the Middle East.

Brookman had plead guilty to one charge of foreign incursion.

Justice Jane Dixon sentenced him to six years and eight months with a non-parole period set for five years in Victoria’s Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Brookman was not due to be released until March 2022.

But in a decision that has shocked the community, he walked free from court after receiving a get-out-of-jail-free ‘discount’ due to time served during Melbourne’s COVID-19 lock down.

The Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety said early release exemptions were awarded to prisoners who demonstrated good behaviour while suffering disruption or deprivation.

Radio presenter Neil Mitchell from Melbourne’s 3AW told Sunrise on Friday the decision was hypocritical and the system is broken.

‘Terrific isn’t it, everybody else in Victoria gets locked down and they get let out, that is the way it works,’ he said.

‘This is a problem, this is a stuff up. It is a slip it and it is a nasty one.’

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews also slammed the decision to let Brookman loose early.

‘Here we have an individual who was convicted of terrorist-related offences, who should have been serving an additional nine months, but they were – he was released within nine hours of the sentence being handed down, simply because he was locked up during COVID. I mean, it’s outrageous.’ she said.

Ms Andrews said the Victorian Government needs to urgently reassess its policy to ‘rectify this situation’.

Justice Dixon said Mr Brookmans’ prospects of rehabilitation were ‘only fair’, that he had shown no signs of remorse and that his extremist attitudes and beliefs were ‘concerning’.

The Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety refused to make comment on Mr Brookman’s release saying they did not comment on ‘individual prisoners, former prisoners or placements’.

Mr Brookman, a trained nurse who once worked as a paramedic for Ambulance Victoria, went to Syria in 2014 to aid foreign fighters.

He was on the frontline with ISIS against the Assad regimis and spent 10-weeks in the Middle East taking reconnaissance and weapons training.

Source: Daily Mail