By Kirsty Ross
JACK Thomas could be back in Werribee later than expected following a legal challenge to his jail term.
Prosecutors in charge of the case against Thomas bungled his sentence by requesting jail time nearly two years less than that required by law.
Thomas, a Werribee resident and the first person convicted under Australia’s new anti-terrorism laws, was sentenced to a two-year minimum instead of the three years and nine months required by law.
Under the Commonwealth Crimes Act, Thomas should have been sentenced to a minimum term of 75 per cent of his five-year sentence.
Thomas’ lawyer Rob Stary said he was “pretty confident” the appeal, heard before the Supreme Court early last week, would go in his client’s favour.
Mr Stary said there were two factors the legal team, including Lex Lasry QC, argued during the appeal.
“One was that the same Australian Federal Police were present in the earlier interrogations and therefore the whole interview process had become contaminated,” Mr Stary said.
“The second factor was based on the fact that if Thomas could only have ever been prosecuted back in Australia, why wasn’t the interview process deferred until he’d returned – bearing in mind that they’d gathered all the intelligence and they’d completed all the other investigations up until that point.”
Mr Stary described the Crown’s inability to identify the new provisions of the anti-terror law as “extraordinary”.
“If we’re successful on the appeal against conviction, and we’re expecting the charges to be thrown out – if we are not successful we still have an expectation that the sentence would not be increased,” Mr Stary said.
He said Thomas had already served 14 months behind bars in Pakistan and Australia.
“He shouldn’t be serving two years let alone the sentence being increased to three years and nine months,” he said.
Reasons including Thomas’ family reunification, work, no prior convictions, and not committing an offence in Australia should be considered, he said.
The appeal case will be heard at a date yet to be determined. Meanwhile, Mr Stary described a mainstream report that Thomas had been beaten in jail as a “scandal”.
“He was never beaten up, it was a false report,” he said. “It damages him because it looks like he’s been in some kind of altercation, but in fact he has remained completely passive while he’s been in there.”
Thomas, previously held in solitary confinement at Port Phillip Prison, is held in the psychiatric ward and allowed weekly family visits rather than the monthly visits to which he was accustomed during the trial.
“Ironically his conditions have improved since he’s been convicted. You’d think it would be the other way around,” Mr Stary said.
“It just shows this case defies all logic.”
