A 19-year-old who flew under a false name along with the controversial preacher Junaid Thorne has been jailed for at least three months after efforts to have him serve the sentence in the community broke down.
Mostafa Shiddiquzzaman, who was initially sentenced in August, was being assessed for an intensive corrections order (ICO), but repeatedly breached his bail conditions and was rearrested on Thursday.
Experts in countering violent extremism say the case demonstrates the practical difficulties faced by people trying to break away from “antisocial” circles.
To qualify for the ICO, Shiddiquzzaman, whose family is based in Perth, needed to find permanent accommodation in Sydney. But his barrister, Paul Bodisco, told the court the “stigma that arose from the reportage of this matter” meant few had offered to help the young man.
He was arrested in December 2014 at Sydney airport along with Thorne, a self-styled sheikh who has attracted notoriety for his social media posts regarding the Charlie Hebdo killings.
Thorne has also lectured at the al-Furqan centre in Melbourne and the al-Risalah centre in Sydney, both of which have been linked to Australians fighting with Islamic State and are now closed.
Shiddiquzzaman first breached his bail in August when police found he was not living at his nominated address. He claimed his landlord had forced him out, wary of attracting controversy.
Bodisco told the court his client had left a second property after only being offered a couch to sleep on and because his housemates were engaging in “activities he did not approve of” – understood to be drug use.
Guardian Australia understands Shiddiquzzaman then became homeless and was sleeping in places of worship. He had found accommodation with a family he met through a mosque but breached his bail again on Thursday after missing a curfew and not carrying his designated mobile phone.
Judge Andrew Scotting said he was sympathetic towards Shiddiquzzaman, who had received “very limited support” from the community, but said he needed to “really face up to the predicament he finds himself in”.
“Full-time imprisonment is the only way this matter can be appropriately dealt with,” he said.
Shiddiquzzaman will be eligible for release on 2 March. His solicitor, Lydia Shelly, said her client’s inability to find stable housing showed “the disconnect between the circumstances of young people before the courts and the community’s lack of capacity to support them”.
“There were a handful of people who stood up, but they are disproportionately shouldering the responsibility, trying to prevent people from going in. They’re trying to plug the gaps that exist, and we’re drowning.”
She said Shiddiquzzaman had made “massive, substantial” progress in the past few months and was beginning to form new social ties, which she feared would be undone by a stint in prison, particularly if he was sent to Goulburn’s Supermax unit, where Thorne is imprisoned in segregation. “That would be completely detrimental to any prospect of rehabilitation, it will be completely counterproductive, and disproportionate to his crime.”
A “culture of fear” had prevented some in Sydney’s Muslim communities from reaching out to help, she said.
Anne Aly, an associate professor in countering violent extremism at Curtin University, said steering young people away from dangerous paths was “not just about changing someone’s mind or behavioural patterns”.
“You have to change their whole environment as well, and that’s often a more difficult task,” she said. “They face poverty, homelessness, all of these things and it’s because they’ve left this circle that’s been not only their social circle but their livelihood circle as well.”
She said she knew of examples of other young people who had become homeless or suffered family breakdown, and become vulnerable to extremism.
“These men search for options and if the only thing open to them is a mosque or particular group seeking to utilise them or manipulate them, then that group becomes the person’s family.”
Thorne will be released from Supermax on Sunday after serving four months in prison.
