Junaid Thorne has sentence for flying under false name cut by a month
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Version 0 of 1. Self-proclaimed sheikh Junaid Thorne has had his jail sentence for flying under a false name cut to eight months, with a minimum sentence of four months, at an appeal hearing. The 26-year-old, who was on bail during the appeal against a nine-month sentence (six-month minimum), hugged a crying female supporter before being taken into custody at Sydney’s district court on Thursday afternoon. Thorne was sentenced in June after pleading guilty to using false ID to obtain an airline ticket and flying under a false name. Last December Thorne and two others took a flight from Perth to Sydney via Brisbane using tickets booked under false names. But Thorne attached a frequent flyer code registered to his real name, and Virgin Australia notified the Australian federal police of the discrepancy. The trio were arrested on their arrival in Sydney. Thorne, who courted controversy in January for his posts on social media seemingly justifying the Charlie Hebdo killings, admitted his motive in using a false name was to “elude authorities” and deflect media attention. In appealing against the severity of the jail sentence, barrister Wayne Flynn argued that Thorne had a clean record and was seeking to leave Western Australia “incognito” after being issued death threats. “It wasn’t done to thwart any lawful surveillance,” he said. Thorne had also pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and felt he was “forced” into committing the offence. One of his co-offenders, Mostafa Shiddiquzzaman, 19, who was appealing against his original sentence of eight months in jail, with a five-month minimum term, was referred for an intensive corrections order, under which a sentence is served in the community under supervision. Shiddiquzzaman had used the false name because he was “concerned he would be targeted due to travelling with Mr Thorne and would be considered guilty by association”, Flynn said. The court heard on Wednesday that a jail sentence for the duo was disproportionate as the third man involved, Omer Issak, had been given a 12-month supervision order. A police prosecutor said the potential dangers involved in people booking one-way flights under false names “goes to the very heart of the reasons why parliament has criminalised such conduct”. While Issak had simply gone along with the scheme, the behaviour of Thorne and Shiddiquzzaman had been “calculated”, he said. Thorne, who is now based in New South Wales, has lectured at the Al-Furqan centre in Melbourne and the Al-Risalah centre in Sydney, both of which have been frequented by Australians fighting with Islamic State and are now closed. He was born in Western Australia but moved to Saudi Arabia in his youth. The Noongar man briefly served time in a Saudi Arabian prison after protesting against the imprisonment of his brother Shayden on terrorism charges there in 2011. Both were eventually deported to Australia after lobbying by their mother and diplomatic appeals by the Australian government. |