Convicted terror supporter will head back to jail after he viewed porn and ultra-violent shooting games on a phone and laptop monitored by cops
- Adam Brookman will be sentenced later on Friday
- Pleaded guilty to four charges of breaching control order
- Breached social media access ban imposed by AFP
A convicted terror supporter who tried to delete his violent pornographic browser history from an Australian Federal Police-monitored laptop will be jailed and back behind bars.
Melbourne nurse and paramedic Adam Brookman supported Chechen fighters on the frontline against the Assad regime in Syria was jailed for six years for his involvement in a foreign incursion in 2014.
He went into custody after returning to Australia in 2015 but wasn’t sentenced until June last year when he received six years and eight months prison for pleading guilty to performing acts in support or promotion of the commission of an offence under foreign incursion laws.
With time served he was immediately released from prison, leaving police scrambling to place him on a control order which imposed strict restrictions on his laptop and mobile phone usage.
Adam Brookman (pictured while previously in custody in 2021) will be sentenced on Friday
He agreed to a ban on social media access without written approval from the AFP, and to not access unauthorised materials showing knives, guns, executions or explosions.
But within weeks of his release Brookman was breaching the order.
For three months police monitoring his online activities – accessed through an AFP- provided computer and phone.
They watched him visit pornographic websites and then delete details of the clips and videos from his browser history.
One video, a Justice League themed animated clip, involved physical and sexual violence and concluded with the main character, Supergirl, being raped and executed.
He also played and watched first-person shooter video games, described in a pre-sentence hearing by a prosecutor on Friday as ‘ultra violent’.
The 46-year-old has pleaded guilty to four charges of breaching the control order.
Three of the charges related to his accessing of unauthorised materials while the fourth was laid when he put a password on the devices without permission.
Within weeks of being released from prison, Adam Brookman (pictured) breached a control order imposed by Australian Federal Police
Brookman’s barrister Rahmin de Krester said the shooter games were probably the most serious of the contraventions, but he didn’t see any of them as ‘that serious’.
Brookman had a passion for medical issues and had worked hard in life, but lost his career after travelling overseas and later being jailed, he said.
‘He’s sitting at home, he’s bored. There is a degree of boredom, a degree of defeat in terms of what his life has become,’ he said.
Judge Simon Moglia said he was most concerned about Brookman’s deception in deleting his browser history, despite knowing his activity was being supervised by police.
He said it wasn’t irrational for controls or monitoring of Brookman’s use of first-person shooter games, but made clear he didn’t think they led to violence which could in turn become terrorism.
‘There is a risk in terms of the obsessiveness or compulsion to keep playing or engaging in violence – animated as it is – that may well for somebody, create concerns,’ he said.
The former Melbourne nurse and paramedic had a passion for medical issues and had worked hard in in his career before he was later being jailed
The judge also took issue with the charge relating to the password because Brookman had told officers about it, and the password had not stopped them monitoring his devices.
He warned if there was no reasonable reason for a breach to be prosecuted the control orders could become an instrument of oppression.
He worried that would ‘create a class of people who are aggravated and angry’.
The judge, who said Brookman would be jailed, will deliver the sentence later on Friday.
Adam Brookman (pictured) pleaded guilty to four charges of breaching control order
