SYDNEY // An Australian nurse who says he was forced by ISIL to work as a medic in Syria was arrested after returning home and faces terrorism-related charges of supporting the extremist group.
Adam Brookman, 39, was arrested at Sydney’s international airport on Friday night, Australian federal police said in a statement on Saturday.
He is the first Australian involved with ISIL known to have returned home since the group swept into western Iraq in June last year and declared the establishment of a caliphate, said Greg Barton, a terrorism expert at Monarch University.
“He’s certainly the first Australian to come back from ISIL-controlled territory having lived and worked among ISIL,” Mr Barton said. “Culpability is the nub of the issue here.”
Dozens of Australians who are suspected of fighting with militias in the Middle East have previously returned home. But none has been charged because of a lack of proof.
Mr Brookman appeared from a police cell by video link in the Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday, where a magistrate granted an application by the Melbourne Joint Counter Terrorism Team to extradite him to his hometown of Melbourne.
He did not speak during his brief appearance.
He is to appear in a Melbourne court no later than Monday morning on two charges that each carries a maximum of 25 years in prison.
Court documents show that both charges allege that he knowingly provided support to ISIL by undertaking guard duty and reconnaissance for the militants.
Mr Brookman surrendered to Turkish officials in Turkey on Tuesday and voluntarily flew back to Australia with a police escort.
A Muslim convert and father of five children who live in Melbourne, he told Fairfax Media in May that he went to Syria last year to do humanitarian work for civilians caught in the war. He said he was innocent of any crime and was forced to join ISIL after being injured in an airstrike and taken to a hospital controlled by the group at Al Bab in Aleppo province.
“After I recovered, they wouldn’t let me leave,” he said.
He won the militants’ trust by working as a medic and was able to escape to Turkey in December, he said.
It is not clear whether Mr Brookman was still in Syria on December 4, when Australia made the presence of its citizens in the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa province in Syria a crime punishable by 10 years in prison.
ISIL has had conspicuous success in recruiting in Australia.
The London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence estimates that between 100 and 250 Australians have joined militants in Iraq and Syria. The centre estimates only 100 fighters have arrived from the United States, which has a population more than 13 times larger than Australia’s .
The government estimates that up to half the Australian foreign fighters are dual nationals. It plans to legislate to strip them of their Australian citizenship to prevent them from returning.
* Associated Press
