An Australian man who spent time at an al-Qaida training camp and met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan was sentenced Wednesday to nine months in prison but freed because of time already served.Joseph Thomas, a 35-year-old Muslim convert dubbed "Jihad Jack" by the Australian media, last week was found innocent at a retrial of receiving funds from a terrorist group but guilty of falsifying his passport. Thomas concedes he went to Afghanistan in early 2001 with the intention of helping the hardline Islamist Taliban regime but says he changed his mind after the Sept. 11 attacks and has since renounced extremism.
The trial was the second time Thomas faced the charges. He was initially convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for accepting cash and a plane ticket from a man prosecutors said was a senior al-Qaida figure in Pakistan, and on a passport tampering charge. An appeals court overturned the conviction after finding prosecutors had incorrectly relied on an interrogation of Thomas by Australian police in Pakistan, where he was held for six months without charge.
Thomas' lawyers had argued he had no connection to the terrorist group and had changed his passport -- sticking a Pakistan visa over one for Afghanistan issued by the Taliban -- because he feared he would be treated with suspicion for having it. A jury last week found Thomas not guilty of the terrorism charge.
In sentencing Wednesday, Justice Elizabeth Curtain said she had taken into account the more than five years it had taken to resolve Thomas' case, his mental state, lack of prior convictions and admission to altering his passport. She said Thomas was unlikely to re-offend and had good prospects for rehabilitation. She sentenced him to nine months in prison -- the period he served before the appeals court overturned his earlier conviction -- and Thomas walked free from the courtroom.