Terror-accused 'found Islam after Bondi'_5494

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Giving up a "Bondi life" of alcohol,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, cigarettes and drugs for Islam was his own personal jihad, a terror-accused has told a Sydney court.
He also said a pocket chainsaw, fold-away shovel, backpacks,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, knives and other ex-army equipment found at his house were for use on his regular camping expeditions.
"The day she converted to Islam is the same day we got married," he said.
After first giving up on a business computing course and then an English language course, Hasan found himself working as a hotel cleaner and later a fish filleter on Sydney's Bondi Beach.
"When I was in the Bondi life - drinking,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, dreaming, smoking - for me to give up all this and follow these things (Islam) is jihad,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login," he told Justice Anthony Whealy after swearing on the Koran on Tuesday.
Hasan told the jury he began attending the Lakemba Prayer House, where he met most of his co-accused.
Terror-accused 'found Islam after Bondi'
Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho, Mohamed Ali Elomar, Mohammed Omar Jamal and Hasan have all pleaded not guilty to conspiring to commit acts in preparation for a terrorist act.
"(It is) struggling against all these ... temptations."
Called as the first defence witness Hasan, now 39, said he was not practising religion when he arrived in Australia.
After six months, the prosecution finished leading evidence against the five in the NSW Supreme Court in Parramatta on Tuesday.
Hasan will continue giving evidence on Wednesday.
But he said a book seized from his house in 2005 police raids was to teach him how to maintain temperatures for fish and seafood in his shop, and was not terrorism-related material.
Abdul Rakib Hasan told the NSW Supreme Court that after arriving in Australia from Bangladesh in 1989, he spent a decade ignoring his faith while living on Sydney's famous beach.
"I used to go camping, bushwalking - so it's important to have those," he said.
But when he moved in with his girlfriend in the late 1990s, a friend told him to "fix yourself up" before getting married, and it was then he renewed his faith.
Four years ago, Hasan was arrested at his Lakemba home and is now facing trial charged with plotting a terrorist attack between July 2004 and November 2005 with four other Sydney men.
After returning to Islam, he married his girlfriend and they moved to Lakemba in 2000,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, where he started his own fish shop.
He did make trips down to Melbourne to meet with people but they were to help a friend with an exorcism and for marriage counselling with the sheik - not to plan extremist action, he said.