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| I've got to get me a dishtowel like that. It's really very becoming... |
| No explosives? |
Mr Thomas will appear in the same court on February 10, but defence lawyers Lex Lasry, QC, and Robert Stary said he would apply for bail on Wednesday. He was taken to Barwon Prison's maximum-security Acacia unit where he faces a 23-hour lockdown and restrictions on visitors and phone calls. The charges relate to Mr Thomas's time in Pakistan from November 2002 to January 2003. Outside court, Mr Stary said the charges would be strenuously denied. He questioned why police waited 18 months to arrest Mr Thomas and how he was expected to know about laws enacted while he was overseas. "He had been away from Australia for months and months before the law was made," Mr Stary said. "There is no way Mr Thomas could have known about it."
Mr Thomas is a former schoolboy punk band member and avid skateboarder who later became a chef at top Melbourne restaurants, including Carmine's and Madame Jo Jo's. He also drove taxis and was a volunteer worker for the homeless. He was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, on January 4 last year, as he tried to board a plane to Australia via Hong Kong. Although Pakistani authorities claimed he had had personal contact with Osama bin Laden, took explosives training and associated with an alleged planner of the September 11 attacks, he was released without charge five months later and deported. Mr Thomas was questioned by AFP officers in his Pakistani cell, but admissions he allegedly made are believed to be inadmissible because of the absence of a lawyer. Back in Melbourne, he refused to take part in a formal AFP interview. At the time, Mr Thomas's father Ian told the Herald Sun his son was not a radical. "The sole intention of Jack's trip was to pursue Islamic studies ... he never showed any radical tendencies," he said.