Curtis Cheng killing: Gun supplier Talal Alameddine’s jail sentence reduced
The state’s most powerful court has shaved years off the jail sentence of Talal Alameddine, the terrorist who provided the gun used to kill NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng.
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The terrorist who provided the gun used to kill NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng has had three years shaved off his sentence but three top judges are divided about whether he had ‘sympathy’ for the Islamic State.
Mr Cheng was leaving the police headquarters at Parramatta, where he worked as a civilian accountant, in October 2015 when radicalised teenager Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad stepped from the shadows and shot him in the back of the head.
The 15-year-old member of IS was himself shot dead by police constables.
Farhad had been handed the old .38 Smith and Wesson British service revolver by Raban Alou, another IS supporter, who had sourced the gun from Talal Alameddine.
Alameddine, in 2018, was given seven years and two months for possessing the gun in preparation for a terrorist act and 14 years for supplying the gun to Alou.
He was first eligible for release on parole in 2029 but appealed.
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, the most powerful in the state, reduced his prison time by three years on Friday.
He will now become eligible for parole in August 2026.
But the court was split - two of the three justices found the original sentencing judge, Justice Peter Johnson, made a mistake by admitting a statement from a police officer described Alameddine as an IS sympathiser.
Alameddine, at the time of Mr Cheng’s murder, was 22 but police who knew him in the months and years leading up to the shooting told the court he changed from a flirty, cheeky young man into a serious, aggressive person.
He told one officer his beard was “for ISIS” and Justice Johnson felt that illustrated his sympathy for the terrorist cause.
Only Justice Derek Price, on Friday, agreed with Justice Johnson.
Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and Justice Natalie Adams, overruling him by majority, weren’t convinced Alameddine’s crimes were aggravated by sympathy for IS.
But they found he was indifferent the gun would be used for a terror attack.
One year before the attack Alameddine had been slapped with a firearm prohibition order after police concluded he was not fit to have access to weapons.
He was a repeat criminal despite his supportive family and multiple chances to redeem himself, Justice Johnson found when sentencing Alameddine in 2018.
“(Mr Cheng) was innocently going about his normal affairs, walking down the street, when he was selected randomly as the target for a terrorist attack,” the judge said.
“He was shot dead in the horrific circumstances.”
The judge said he found no signs of contrition or remorse in Alameddine.
His full sentence, after appeal, will expire in 2030.