A prison chaplain has claimed a Sydney man convicted of leading Islamic State-backed terrorist group, the Shura, did not hold extremist or violent views.
Giving evidence at a sentence hearing on Thursday, Muslim chaplain Ahmed Kilani said Hamdi Alqudsi had never said anything radicalised to him despite the pair chatting about 20 times since 2017 while the now convicted terror boss was behind bars.
"From my engagement with him, I have never seen anything to indicate any support for any violent extremism," Mr Kilani told the NSW Supreme Court.
Other inmates had actually turned on him, making his life difficult in prison because they did not see him as extreme, he said.
Crown prosecutor Trish McDonald SC argued that Alqudsi, who is incarcerated in Goulburn's supermax prison, had expressed an extremist ideology in the past and had never formally abandoned those views.
In September last year, a jury found Alqudsi guilty of directing the activities of the Shura from August to December 2014.
His plans, which were never completed, included attacks on the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the Israeli embassy, the Garden Island Naval Base in the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo, and a targeted strike on the Australian Federal Police at a courthouse.
The Shura, which means consultative or consultation council in Arabic, was formed in 2013 initially to send fighters from Australia to Syria. The group pledged allegiance to Islamic State in August 2014.
On Thursday, Ms McDonald told Justice Stephen Rothman that Alqudsi's offending was serious as he was the head of an extremist organisation which targeted young men, some as young as 16.
"The role of the offender in respect of the Shura has been that he has either been described as the leader and as reflected in the verdict of the jury the one directing the activities of the organisation," the barrister said.
He had given the greenlight for certain planned attacks, had been persistent in the group pledging allegiance to Islamic State, and took active, clandestine steps to avoid monitoring and detection by police, she said.
Charged in November 2019 while he was already behind bars, the court will have to determine how any jail time and non-parole period imposed fits with his current time in custody.
Directing a terrorist organisation carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
The hearing continues.
