Retrial For Muslim Convicted Of Creating Terror Manual Jihad Handbook

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

HE WAS the first person in Australia to be jailed for making a ''terror manual''.

Bilal Khazaal, a former Qantas baggage handler, was sentenced in 2009 to 12 years' jail for producing a 110-page e-book called the Provisions on the Rules of Jihad. He posted the e-book, prepared over three days in September 2003, using material in Arabic downloaded from the internet, on a website allegedly connected to al-Qaeda.

Mr Khazaal never denied making the e-book but insisted it was merely religious journalism as he was a writer for the magazine Nida'ul Islam (The Call of Islam) and was never intended as a terrorism manual.

The book included such topics as ''detonating a car from a distance'', letter bombs, sniping and identifying desirable characteristics of an assassin.

Yesterday Mr Khazaal had his conviction quashed and a new trial ordered. Two of the three NSW Court of Criminal appeal judges ruled the trial judge, Megan Latham, should have directed the jury that the Crown was required to prove beyond reasonable doubt the document was intended to facilitate the preparation for or assist in a terrorist act rather than as an academic exercise...

Prosecutors had alleged at Mr Khazaal's trial that the act of selecting, compiling and editing the downloaded content and writing a forward to the book - subtitled ''Short Judicial Rulings and Organisational Instructions for Fighters and Mujahideen Against Infidels'' - amounted to the ''making of a document''.

Mr Khazaal was convicted in 2009 of making a document connected with assistance in a terrorist act. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the second count - that he attempted to urge others to commit a terrorist act.

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