R v HG; R v WE

Judgment - EX TEMPORE (REVISED)

1. The trial of the accused commenced on 24 July last and is now in its fourth week. Shortly prior to the conclusion of the Crown case (indeed only a matter of about an hour before) the Crown indicated that an issue had arisen in respect of its proposed tender, against the accused WE, of Issues 7 and 8 of a magazine entitled "Dabiq", a publication of Islamic State, which are said to have been accessed by WE in 2015. Mr Trevallion, who appears on behalf of the accused, objected to the proposed tender of that material. In order to place the issue which has arisen in its proper context, some short background is required.
2. Along with the accused HG, WE has pleaded not guilty to an indictment alleging that he engaged in an act or acts in preparation for a terrorist act or acts. It is part of the Crown case that at the time of his alleged commission of that offence, the accused held what might be described as a violent or, as it is sometimes described, jihadist ideology. In support of that assertion, the Crown relies on the fact that during the period leading up to the alleged commission of the offence the accused had accessed a range of what has been described as "extremist material" on the internet, some of which he downloaded. There is evidence that the two magazines which are the subject of the present tender were amongst the downloaded material.
3. In his opening address to the jury, the Crown said the following: Also evidence I expect will be placed before you that in November of 2015, WE left Australia with his parents for a holiday trip to Egypt and returned to Australia on 31 January 2016. WE was interviewed by members of an Australian security agency in April 2016 in relation to his travel in Egypt and told the people of that security agency that while in Egypt he had left his parents and had travelled to a place called El-Arish. El-Arish is a seaside city in Egypt in an area called the Sinai Peninsula, and specifically an area close to Israel and the Gaza Strip border. The northern Sinai area, I expect you will hear evidence, is, and has been for some time, an area of violence where terrorist attacks have occurred. In November of 2015 there was a group, a radical Islamist group, operating in that northern Sinai area which had been designated by Islamic State as being one of its provinces, known as a Wilayat. The Sinai province of Islamic State was what they were claiming this was, so this was the area to which WE travelled after parting from his parents, as he told these people in April 2016 when he was interviewed.