Mehmet Biber 'just wanted to help' when he went to Syria, court told
A western Sydney man charged with foreign incursion offences after he went to Syria told a court he was prepared but not eager to fight and "just wanted to help" the war-torn country.
Mehmet Biber, 25, left Sydney and went to Syria, via Turkey, with a group of Australian men who joined a rebel group fighting against the Syrian government in July 2013.
The men were supported by terrorist recruiter Hamdi Alqudsi, who has since been sentenced to a minimum six years in prison for recruiting seven men, including Biber, and facilitating their entry into Syria to fight for a terrorist group.
Biber returned to Australia in 2014 and was arrested with a teenage boy during counter-terrorism raids in south-west Sydney in 2016.
He pleaded guilty in February to entering a foreign state with intent to engage in a hostile activity.
Biber told a NSW Supreme Court sentence hearing on Friday he had grown increasingly distressed by online videos of atrocities from Syria's civil war, often watching them for an hour a day before he left.
"Seeing images of women and children being pulled out of rubble ... I remember some of the videos were very, very horrific.
"That particularly hit me in the heart because I had a wife and she was pregnant at the time.
"I wanted to do something to help."
He had considered aid work before a close friend said Alqudsi could help the pair travel to Syria.
When asked if he was prepared to fight, Biber said: "I was prepared to try. I don't know how far I would have gotten."
Biber told the court the rebel group Ahrar al-Sham arranged for the men to stay in a guest house in a rural area, where he said they did "literally nothing" most of the time.
"They would never take us anywhere near the front line, it was always safe zones.
"We were extremely bored; it was so boring."
Biber said he posed for a photo with other group members, dressed in black and wielding guns in front of a utility vehicle, because they were young and "just trying to take a cool photo".
He began to question what he was doing and decided to leave Syria during a trip to Raqqa in August 2013.
"I just wanted to help. I was prepared to fight [but] I wasn't very eager.
"I don't know what would've happened if they asked me, but they never did."
Biber admitted he previously expressed sympathy for ISIS after a childhood friend died fighting for the group, some time after Biber left Syria.
"The interest stemmed from [my friend] being killed. It was more of an emotional connection than a political connection.
"I never made any actions based on those views."
He said his views had changed by the time of his arrest and he no longer sympathised with the group.
Biber, who has been in custody since his arrest, admitted he regretted "the path I took and the decisions I made" and said he wanted to move on with his life.
"I was young, it was six years ago. My mentality is different now."
The hearing continues at Parramatta on Friday afternoon.