Australia's 'Jihad Jack' cleared of taking Al-Qaeda cashAn Australian Muslim convert was Thursday found not guilty of receiving money from the Al-Qaeda terror network after travelling to Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Former taxi driver taxi driver n → taxista m/f taxi driver taxi n → chauffeur m de taxi taxi driver taxi n → Jack Thomas was acquitted on the terror charge in a retrial retrial n. a new trial granted upon the motion of the losing party, based on obvious error, bias or newly-discovered evidence. (See: newly-discovered evidence) in Melbourne more than two years after he became the first Australian to be convicted under anti-terrorism laws introduced after the attacks on New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and Washington. But the retrial jury did find Thomas -- dubbed "Jihad Jack" by the media after his trial -- guilty of altering his passport. Thomas, who trained in an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, was found guilty in February 2006 of accepting 3,500 US dollars in cash and an air ticket home given to him in 2003 by a senior Al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan. The 35-year-old was retried re·tried v. Past tense and past participle of retry. after the court of appeal quashed his original conviction, ruling that an Australian police interview with Thomas in Pakistan in 2003 was conducted under duress duress (dy  `rĭs, d`–, d and was therefore inadmissible That which, according to established legal principles, cannot be received into evidence at a trial for consideration by the jury or judge in reaching a determination of the action. .
"He has now been acquitted of all terrorist related charges and obviously that is a matter of great satisfaction to him and to those of us who represented him," said Thomas's lawyer Jim Kennan Jim Kennan is a former Australian politician and current Adjunct Professor of Law at Deakin University. He earned a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne. He was a member of parliament between 1982 and 1993, initially in the Legislative Council, and then in the outside the Melbourne court. Thomas should never have been retried, he said. "(But) we put ourselves (to) the jury ... and they have reached this verdict and we are happy with it. "It has been a difficult period for him very obviously and it has now come to the satisfactory end in my legal view," Kennan said. Prosecutors had alleged Thomas accepted money and the air ticket from a man claiming to have a message from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden: see bin Laden, Osama. who allegedly wanted a "white boy" to work for him in Australia. The operative allegedly told Thomas he could offer 10,000 US dollars immediately to anyone willing to carry out an attack, the court was told during the retrial that started last week. Prosecutors sought the retrial after Thomas gave a television interview in 2006 in which he told how he went to Afghanistan in 2001 to fight for the Taliban in the country's civil war. Taking his wife and young child, he told how he went to train with the Taliban in March 2001 but later ended up in an Al-Qaeda camp, although he claimed he only found that out when bin Laden turned up for a visit. He found world's most wanted Most Wanted may refer to:
"He didn't like too many kisses. He didn't mind being hugged, but kisses he didn't like," Thomas had said in the comments that were later used against him in court. Thomas, who was not remanded in custody, had denied both charges against him. He said he accepted the money and plane ticket simply because he wanted to return to his family and had no intention of becoming an Al-Qaeda operative. He got the items from Pakistanis sympathetic to the Taliban and that the Al-Qaeda operative had "hijacked" the situation, pretending the items were a gift from him, he claimed. Thomas's lawyer had said prosecutors had not provided any evidence of a money trail, nor had they shown that the man who gave Thomas the cash was linked to Al-Qaeda. Thomas will reappear in court for a pre-sentence hearing on the passport charge next week. 
|
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion