Failure to extradite terrorist Neil Prakash is political

Failure to extradite terrorist Neil Prakash is political

A Turkish court's decision to deny the extradition of Australia's number one terror target has stunned Australia, but is as much political as judicial, says terror expert Greg Barton.

Neil Prakash, who is wanted over multiple terror offences in Australia, including grooming a young Melbourne man to behead a policeman on Anzac Day, 2015, will stay in Turkish prison for the time being as the court considers laying local charges against him.

Neil Prakash, left, from a jihadist propaganda video in about 2015.

Neil Prakash, left, from a jihadist propaganda video in about 2015.Credit:Twitter

But in a surprise decision after a drawn-out, 18-month judicial process, Judge Ismail Deniz said on Friday the conditions for the extradition request by Australia had not been disclosed to the court.

"The Turkish government gave the instruction," said Professor Barton, professor of global economic politics at Deakin University.


"The extradition was first put on ice by [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and then finally spiked."

The extradition case against Prakash has been plagued by multiple, unexplained adjournments. In the early stages, the court could not arrange a skilled translator to record Prakash's statements. His real identity was only officially confirmed and recorded in the case file during his ninth hearing in December last year.


Prakash initally denied that was his identity, then he denied he was an Islamic State member. Later he claimed he was simply a footsoldier of the movement, not a leader.

For several hours during proceedings on Friday morning, it had appeared that Prakash would be freed from high security prison as his lawyer had demanded. However, judge Deniz changed his mind and remanded the terror suspect in custody.

Prakash could face up to 25 years in a Turkish jail if convicted of local charges of being a senior leader with the militant group.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop both said they were disappointed by the decision, but would keep fighting.

‘‘We’ll be working closely with the Turkish authorities to see how we can ensure that he is brought back to face justice in Australian courts," Mr Turnbull said on Friday. In May last year he said he expected Prakash's extradition to come "within months".

Erdogan addresses supporters outside his official residence in Istanbul.

Erdogan addresses supporters outside his official residence in Istanbul.Credit:AP

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said, "I'm happy to see him rot in jail in Turkey", though it would have been better had he been "targeted and killed" on the battlefield.

Prakash faces a potential life sentence if convicted in Australia of terrorism offences.

Barton said the fault did not appear to lie with Australian authorities which had been pushing hard behind the scenes for extradition.


However, since a mysterious failed coup attempt two years ago, Turkey under president Erdogan has veered sharply away from the path of democracy and become a Middle-Eastern autocracy, Barton said.

The Turkish consulate-general did not respond to a request to comment. Erdogan was recently re-elected as president after he exploited the coup attempt to expand his powers and justify a heavy-handed crackdown on the military, the courts, the media, the parliament and other institutions. The purge saw more than 200,000 civil servants arrested or sacked.

Erdogan has also distanced his country from the west over his belief that western countries, including Australia, are harbouring people from the Gulenist movement that he considers terrorists, and over the situation in Syria.

"The situation in Turkey is more awful than we realise," Barton said. "Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are not going away, and Turkey is now acting as a reservoir for their fighters, allowing them to rebuild."

He likened it to the role Pakistan played in helping the Taliban survive the west's war in Afghanistan, before re-emerging.

From left: Iran's leader Hassan Rouhani, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin lock hands during discussions earlier this year on Syria's future.


Hundreds, if not thousands of former Syrian and Iraqi militants are living in Turkey either in prison, or in relative freedom.

"Erdogan himself uses the extremist rhetoric of jihad and martyrdom; he finds it convenient to mobilise people who can help him, for example, al-Qaeda linked to militia going into Syria, and using extremists in south-east Turkey against the Kurds.

"So having a pool of many thousands of jihadist terrorists in Turkey, including some in jail, makes sense to the Turkish government. If they can use Prakash in an operation in the future, they'll use him for, perhaps, surveillance, or to cross the border into Iraq or Syria, so there's no appetite to bring him to justice."

Professor Greg Barton

Professor Greg BartonCredit:Greg_Barton

Holding the threat of a 25-year sentence over Prakash's head might serve to increase the pressure on him to comply with any Turkish requests, Barton said.

However, Prakash's reported verbal attack on the judge in the court, including that "Allah is the legislator, not him," and "Democracy is not legitimate. Islam is justice," might go against him in the eyes of the Government, Barton said.

Analysts who had followed Prakash’s rise through the ranks of the militant group have expressed shock at the verdict.

“When Prakash joined ISIS he used and distorted that notion of brotherhood to lure young men and women away from their homes and families in the West and into the dystopian nightmare that had become the Caliphate”, Alexandra Bain, a de-radicalisation researcher at St Thomas University in Canada told Fairfax Media.

She served as an expert witness in the case of 14-year-old British schoolboy who was heavily influenced online by Prakash. The teenager is facing a life sentence in a United Kingdom prison for his role in guiding Sevdet Besim's Anzac Day plot.

Sevdet Besim pleaded guilty to planning a terrorist act.

Sevdet Besim pleaded guilty to planning a terrorist act.Credit:Twitter

A Melbourne court sentenced Besim in September 2016 to 10 years in prison for his attempt to commit an act of terrorism on Australian soil.

Barton said Prakash was likely to hold "a number of missing jigsaw puzzle pieces" about the recruitment and publicity arms of Islamic State that could be of crucial importance to Australian authorities.

Prakash's lawyer Mehmet Alper Unver said there was no obstacle to his client being released from jail, barring further charges or indictments against him, according to the ABC.

Appearing in a propaganda video for Islamic State in April 2015, the former mechanic and rapper known by his nom de guerre Abu Khalid al-Cambodi, in reference to his Cambodian heritage, said that he travelled to Syria in 2013 after converting to Islam. He was a frequent attendee of an extremist Islamic centre in Melbourne that influenced several Australians to join terror groups in the Middle East.

Australian intelligence services estimate that around 110 Australians were engaged in fighting with terror groups in Iraq and Syria. Islamic State has been clandestinely rebuilding after its routing in its strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa respectively.


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