An appeals court quashed the conviction of an Australian man accused of receiving funds from al-Qaeda yesterday, ruling that some of the evidence against him was not admissible at his trial.
Joseph Thomas, a British-born Muslim convert nicknamed "Jihad Jack" by Australian media, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and was charged under tough Australian anti-terrorism laws passed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US.
Previously, a jury had found Thomas, 33, guilty on charges that he accepted US$3,500 and a plane ticket to Australia from an al-Qaeda agent in Pakistan and that he held a false passport. The jury rejected prosecutors' claims that Thomas volunteered to set up a terror cell in Australia.
The crimes carried a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison; he was sentenced to five years, and immediately launched an appeal.
Three Victorian Court of Appeal judges yesterday ruled in favor of the defendant, quashing the convictions.
The appeal argued that the record of Thomas' interview with Australian Federal Police in Pakistan should not have been allowed because of the circumstances under which it was conducted.
Thomas was arrested in Pakistan in January 2003 but was not interviewed by Australian police until March.
Defense lawyers claimed Thomas was subjected to "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" while in Pakistan, and that his confession was coerced by Pakistani interrogators who suggested he would be sent to the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, if he did not cooperate.
"The interview was not voluntary because the applicant was not answering questions on the basis of free choice," Thomas' lawyer, Lex Lasry, told the court.
Government lawyers argued during the appeal that Thomas should not be freed, and sought instead for his sentence to be lengthened.
The judges agreed to consider the government's request for the case to be reopened to hear new evidence, a move that leaves open the possibility of a new trial. The judges said they could hear further arguments later.
Thomas is one of a handful of Australians who have been tried under tough counterterrorism laws, which critics say have a lower standard of proof than the country's other criminal laws and reduce suspects' chances of a fair trial.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees