Hamdi Alqudsi sentenced to six years for sending Aussies to Syria

HAMDI Alqudsi, 42, of Western Sydney, raised a finger in salute to Allah as he was led off to begin a six-year sentence for helping seven men go to Syria.

A DISABILITY support pensioner with two wives has been sentenced to at least six years jail for helping seven men go to Syria to fight with extremist groups including, Islamic State.

Hamdi Alqudsi, 42, of western Sydney, cried as he was being sentenced and afterwards called out to his family, including one of his veiled wives, saying he loved them before raising a finger in a salute to Allah as he was lead to the cells.

Hamdi Alqudsi was sentenced to six years in jail.

Justice Christine Adamson sentenced Alqudsi in the Supreme Court to eight years jail with a non-parole period of six years, saying he must have expected that he was sending the men to die in the civil war but had no intention to go himself.

“The was no indication that he was willing to sacrifice his life or his liberty for the cause,” Justice Adamson said.

“The offender’s reasons for offending was at least in part that he understood it to be his religious duty to help send men to Syria to fight.”

Hamdi Alqudsi’s wife was in court to support her husband as he was sentenced for helping seven men go to Syria to fight with extremist groups.

Justice Adamson noted that Alqudsi had helped “several” other men not listed on the indictment reach Syria but said she would only “punish” him for the seven men that he had been charged with helping to travel between June and November 2013.

Alqudsi was found guilty by a jury of seven counts of helping people with the intention of facilitating their entry into Syria for hostile activity.

At the trial the jury heard numerous intercepted phone calls and read transcripts of social media conversations between Alqudsi, the seven men and Australia’s most senior IS member in Syria, Mohammed Ali Baryalei.

In the phone calls, Alqudsi discussed the men’s travel plans directing them to fly to Istanbul, Turkey and then on to the border province of Hatay where they would be smuggled into Syria and brought to “Abu Omar” the nickname for Baryalei.

Justice Adamson said Alqudsi’s “most important role” was in connecting the men to Baryalei.

Six of the men made it to Syria and two of the men, Tyler Casey and Caner Temel, died fighting for opposing Islamist rebel groups.

Step-children of Alqudsi who said "I love you buba" after he was sentenced at Parramatta District Court.

Casey and his wife Amira Karroum were with al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra when they were killed by Islamic State fighters in January 2014 while Temel was killed in the same month fighting for Islamic State.

During the conversations Alqudsi used codes sometimes calling the men “soccer players,” or referring to battles as “operations or surgeries.”

In one phone call, Alqudsi told a recruit Amin Mohamed that, “there’s a big, big surgery, big, big operation coming up involving 1500 brothers and the Emir said their may be a very big number of them that may attain martyrdom ... you guys better start pushing before the front

lines are full”.

Justice Adamson said although Alqudsi did not recruit the men he took on a “significant role” in helping the men get to Syria describing himself in one conversation as being “the head of everything”.

“He was the centre of a wheel in which the seven men and Baryalei were the spokes.”

Justice Adamson said Casey Tyler met Alqudsi while at court in 2011 when one of his wives Carnita Matthews was being prosecuted for falsely claiming a police officer tried to pull off her burqa during a traffic stop.

One of Alqudsi’s wives and another family member leaving Parramatta district court after he was sentenced today.

She was later acquitted of the offence on appeal.

Tyler introduced Alqudsi to three of his friends and asked him to help them reach Baryalei in Syria.

At his sentencing hearing Alqudsi denied he knew what Islamic State was in 2013 or that helping the men travel to a war zone was a crime.

He told the court he loved Australia and taught his step grandchildren to sing “Waltzing Matilda”.

Justice Adamson concluded his evidence was, “false and misleading” and that he had a “moderately high” chance of reoffending.

The court heard Alqudsi came to Australia from Palestine with his parents and siblings when he was 11.

He worked as a security guard and then as a packer at Woolworths where, in 2010, he injured his back and neck for which he received workers’ compensation.

He will be eligible for parole on July 11, 2022.