A man from Melbourne who acknowledged starting two bushfires and warned that people would be “tasted by the fire of Allah” was acquitted of trying to carry out terrorist attacks.
However, after Aran Sherani admitted to filming himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State while brandishing a knife and boasting about being on the run from the police, jurors found him guilty of planning or preparing an act of terrorism.
He stated, “I’m currently on the run from police,” in 2021 video.
He held up a knife to the camera and said, “I slipped away and by the will of Allah I was able to even go to a shop nearby my home and get this.”
He declared that the video was an oath of allegiance and that he would exact revenge on Muslims.
“I pledge allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” he said.
Prior to this, Aran Sherani entered a guilty plea to the jury for belonging to a terrorist group.
Additionally, he hadn’t run from the fact that he was shown in both that video and the footage of two bushfires being started in February 2021 in the northern scrub of Melbourne.
Jurors in Sherani’s Victorian Supreme Court trial were informed by his attorney Pat Doyle that the then-19-year-old was even saying things that a “real terrorist” would say. Ari Sherani, his elder brother, who acknowledged recording one of the videos, was found not guilty on all counts of attempting to carry out a terrorist act.
The two were not terrorists, according to their solicitors, nor did they ever intend to be.
Aran Sherani, who is ethnically Kurdish and identifies with the historically marginalised and stateless people, believed that making the pledge video would enable him to go abroad and fight alongside the Kurdistan people, according to Doyle.
“It’s the defence case that what Aran Sherani wanted to do was send the videos to people that he believed were members of the Islamic State group and… his purpose in doing that was that they would help him go overseas to fight,” he stated to the jury.
“To fight, in particular, with the people of Kurdistan.” Ari Sherani was released from custody right away. A pre-sentence hearing for Aran Sherani is scheduled for a later time.
