Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja's elder brother Arsalan Tariq Khawaja is all set to be jailed on November 5. He will be sentenced by Judge Robert Weber after he admitted his fake terror plots against two different men in 2017 and 2018.
Khawaja will be sentenced next month in the District Court, however, his lawyer Phillip Boulten SC has pleaded for leniency, claiming he was mentally ill at the time, but said his client’s framing of a colleague with false terrorism claims in order to spend more time with a woman was “preposterous” and “crazy.”
The 40-year-old had previously broken down in court while admitting forging entries, included death threats against then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the governor-general, as well as, lists to attack police stations, an Anzac Day ceremony, the Boxing Day Test match and landmarks including Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral in the notebook of his UNSW colleague Kamer Nizamdeen in 2018.
On the both occasions, Khawaja did the crime in the potential romantic competitions with two men to impress the two different women. Well on Friday, 2nd October, he wept in front of court and accepted the long-term imprisonment as he is now facing a maximum jail term of 10 years.
Mr Boulten said: “The offender has always accepted that the seriousness of the offending is one which can only be punished appropriately by a term of imprisonment and one of some significance.”
He further said of Khawaja: “He’s ashamed of himself, he finds it hard to live with it. He’s not bunging this on, it’s real. It’s a real sadness about what he did.”
The lawyer further reiterated that Khawaja was suffering from an acute mental illness when he plotted the bizarre saga, saying: “On the one hand, there’s little doubt that at the time the offender did what he did that he was suffering from mental illness.”
Mr Boulten signed off by saying, “That it was enduring, severe and debilitating. He would never have done anything remotely like this if he wasn’t mentally ill. His mental illness was driving his thinking, it was preposterous. It was goal-orientated, but it was crazy.”
(With Fox Sports Inputs)
