A Sydney man who was in contact with a suspected Australian jihadist has been found guilty of making arrangements for seven men to travel to Syria to fight.

The New South Wales supreme court trial of Hamdi Alqudsi has heard how the 41-year-old facilitated flights and travel routes for seven men and gave them advice on how to exchange money and not draw attention to themselves between June and October 2013.

A jury on Tuesday found him guilty of seven counts of providing services with the intention of supporting hostile acts.

During the trial, the prosecution relied mostly upon a large cache of intercepted calls in Arabic and English, including some with the Australian alleged fighter Mohammad Ali Baryalei.



The pair talked about about border crossings, having “brothers” picked up from a Turkish airport and a battle in which Baryalei cried after seeing a man killed before his eyes, the court sitting at Parramatta heard.

In another conversation, Baryalei, who had been allegedly fighting for Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra, talked about being introduced to people from “the [Islamic] State” and his plans to take the “brothers” with him when he changed allegiances.

“Allahu Akbar!” the jury heard Alqudsi shouted repeatedly upon hearing the news. “I feel like crying, brother.”

Alqudsi’s defence barrister Scott Corish had suggested his client could have thought the men were going to Syria for humanitarian reasons and questioned whether his actions qualified as providing services.

He submitted Alqudsi was a man who cared about people, citing a conversation in which he talked about trying to raise $10,000 to smuggle 20 people from Syria into Turkey ahead of expected bombings.

But prosecutor David Staehli SC said there was no way the jury could find the calls between Alqudsi and Baryalei suggested a humanitarian purpose.

The court had heard conversations in which one of Alqudsi’s recruits asked about what happened when he moved into the “unseen”.

“It’s just a bullet between him and seeing the beautiful face of Allah,” Alqudsi told the man’s travel partner.

In another conversation, Alqudsi asked a recruit’s concerned wife how she would react upon news he had been martyred.

“Of course I would cry,” the court heard the woman said. “But I would say praise be to Allah because this is what we’ve wanted.”

Jihadist literature and pictures of men with guns were allegedly found during raids on the southwest Sydney homes he shared with his two wives.