Thomas got funds from al-Qaeda: court

(AAP) Muslim convert Joseph Terrance Thomas took an airline ticket and cash from terrorist group al-Qaeda while trying to get out of Pakistan, the Victorian Supreme Court has been told.

The 36-year-old was "desperate" to get back to Australia and so accepted the money
and ticket, but refused an offer to work for al-Qaeda, the court was told.
Thomas has pleaded not guilty to one charge of intentionally receiving funds from a
terrorist organisation and another charge of having a falsified passport.
The court was told that Mr Thomas was a Muslim convert who went to Afghanistan in
2000 to help the Taliban fight a civil war.
Crown prosecutor Nicholas Robinson SC said that in 2005 Thomas told the ABC's Four
Corners program that he was asked by Khaled bin Attash in Karachi, in late 2002 or
early 2003, to work for al-Qaeda.
He was offered $US3500 ($A5,000) in cash and a plane ticket to Sydney, Mr Robinson
said.
"This man, bin Attash, came to him, or offered him to work for al-Qaeda," Mr
Robinson said.
"He (bin Attash) said he came with a message from (al-Qaeda leader) Osama" bin Laden.
But Thomas told the ABC the money "had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism".
"The money was because I hadn't worked for so many years," he said in an excerpt
from the program read by Mr Robinson.
Mr Robinson said it was agreed that Thomas accepted the money because he wanted to
go back to Australia, and had not accepted the al-Qaeda work offer.
But he said it was an offence to knowingly receive funds from a terrorist organisation.
Mr Robinson said Thomas trained with the Taliban at a camp in Afghanistan, where he
associated with al-Qaeda members.
Thomas became close enough to bin Laden to know his "likes and dislikes," Mr
Robinson said.
Defence counsel Jim Kennan SC said the crown's case amounted to guilt by association.
Thomas went to Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to
help the Taliban, not al-Qaeda, fight a civil war against the Northern Alliance, Mr
Kennan said.
Thomas may have been ill advised and naive, but it could not be suggested that he
was a terrorist, Mr Kennan said.
He said the money given to Thomas came from Pakistani families who were Taliban
sympathisers, not from al-Qaeda.
In relation to the falsified passport, Mr Kennan said Thomas feared his Taliban visa
could lead to his detention in Pakistan, or at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, so he had the
dates on his visa altered.
But the ploy failed and when he was arrested in January 2003 at a Pakistan airport,
his fears were realised "to the extreme".
He was detained for almost six months and mistreated, including being hooded,
handcuffed and chained to the bars of a "dog house-like cell," Mr Kennan said.
He said Thomas was "strangled, suffocated" and threatened with having his testicles
crushed.
The case before Justice Elizabeth Curtain continues.