Mehmet Biber jailed for more than two years for trip to fight in Syria
A western Sydney man who travelled to Syria intending to fight with rebel groups against Bashar al-Assad's regime has been sentenced to a minimum two years and six months behind bars.
Mehmet Biber was fuelled by YouTube videos of women and children killed in Syria's civil war when he ignored pleas from his family and boarded a plane willing and ready to fight in July 2013.
But he said he never made it to the front line, instead spending much of his time at a rural guest house far from conflict where he kicked a soccer ball with children and grew "extremely" bored.
Biber, then 20, was among a group of young Australian men, supported by terrorist recruiter Hamdi Alqudsi, who travelled to Syria via Turkey to join insurgents Ahrar al-Sham in July 2013.
He became disillusioned and left the group after several months, returning to Australia after he was caught in Turkey with an expired visa in February 2014.
Biber was arrested 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 armed hostile activity and has been on remand at Goulburn Supermax prison.
Justice Christine Adamson on Friday sentenced Biber to a maximum four years and nine months in jail, taking into account time already spent in custody. He will be eligible for release in May 2019.
It was the first time the foreign incursion offence had been prosecuted in Australia.
Biber said during his sentence hearing he had been motivated to go to Syria after he grew increasingly distressed by internet videos of the civil war, often watching for an hour a day.
"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 admitted he previously expressed sympathy for terrorist group Islamic State after his close friend Caner Temel died fighting for the group, some time after Biber left Syria.
"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's father, Gaven Biber, spoke in court documents of his family's agony after they pleaded unsuccessfully with authorities to stop their son four times in the weeks before he flew out.
He said his son's school, Parramatta High School, had become a "religious hothouse" as tensions flared between students who opposed or supported al-Assad's government.
More to come