Isaac el Matari plans for Australian terror attack more than ‘fantasy’, court hears

A young Sydney man told a contact he wanted to perform a terrorist act ‘in the depths of my heart’, a court has heard.

An Islamic State devotee’s plans to target a Sydney church and travel to the Middle East to fight for the bloodthirsty group were far more than just “idle thought or fantasy”, prosecutors say.

The NSW Supreme Court has heard Isaac el Matari, a 22-year-old from Greenacre in Sydney’s southwest, once told a contact that “in the depths of my heart I really wanted to and still want to” carry out a terrorist attack.

He has pleaded guilty to doing an act in preparation and planning for a terrorist act and engaging in preparations for incursions into foreign countries for the purpose of engaging in hostile activities.

An additional charge of being a member of a terrorist group will be taken into account on his sentence.

Isaac El Matari, of Greenacre, will be sentenced after pleading guilty to terror-related offences.

The court has heard he wanted to set up a Jihadi base in the Blue Mountains and talked up plots to attack St Mary’s Cathedral in the Sydney CBD and “conquer” a small town like Orange.

El Matari was also imprisoned in Lebanon as an 18-year-old in 2017 when he tried to join IS fighters, his sentence hearing heard on Tuesday.

Undeterred, two years later he obtained a Pakistan visa with the ultimate intention of travelling to Afghanistan in order to join IS’s Khorasan Province enclave in 2019.

Known as IS KP, the Afghan arm of the terrorist organisation claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing of Kabul International Airport last week, the court heard on Tuesday.

St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney was one venue name dropped as a potential target.

Crown prosecutor Sophie Callan SC told the court el Matari he had also spoken of his intention to “fight on the frontline” for IS.

El Matari’s lawyers claim he took little action to make his “grandiose and delusional” statements a reality.

But Ms Callan argued those conversations about obtaining weapons and visas – secretly recorded by police – were not just “bluster” but a sign of his “genuine intentions or state of mind”.

Ms Callan claimed the extremist went as far as to arrange a “sham marriage” in Australia so officials would be urged to let him back into the country on his return from the Middle East.

El Matari’s plans were foiled when he was arrested by counter terrorism police on July 2, 2019.

This week he appeared wearing prison greens in court via video link from Goulburn’s high risk management centre.

Defence barrister Matthew Johnston told the court there was little evidence or detail, other than his client’s own conversations, of any genuine terrorist plans.

Mr Johnston said from January 2019 el Matari had turned his attention away from any domestic act, telling an associate “the brothers in Australia were cowards” and he wanted to leave.

Isaac El Matari was arrested before he could leave Australia in 2019. Picture: Seven News

El Matari wanted to fight in the Middle East, Mr Johnston said, but he had no intention of battling allied forces in the region and had “no practical understanding” of how to get there or what he would do.

Mr Johnston said his client’s desire to go to Afghanistan was “intertwined with his commitment to his faith”, saying el Matari also imagined himself being engaged in prayer.

“He sees the two as falling hand-in-hand in part,” he said.

“It distinguishes him from someone who wants to go overseas to purely kill for the sake of being a mercenary.”

Mr Johnston said el Matari had shown contrition during his two years in jail and displayed a shift in his ideologies.

Justice Peter Garling will hand down his sentence at a later date.