Sevdet Besim was ultimately jailed for more than a decade for planning a terrorist attack and two other men were prosecuted for weapons offences, but Mr Cruse, who was 19 when arrested, was released later that day and never charged. He told the court on Monday that he had been in bed when he heard banging and his parents screaming as police entered the family home, and that he was wearing only black pants when a police officer wearing a helmet and face mask and holding an assault rifle ordered him to get down in the hallway outside his bedroom. Police at the scene of one of the terror raids in April 2015. Credit:Eddie Jim Mr Cruse said he was lying on his stomach with his hands out either side of his head when the officer asked his name. "He said, 'This, this is the one', and then he strikes me on the head.

"It felt like he punched or kicked me, I’m not sure, to the left cheekbone,’’ he said. The officer bound the young man’s hands with a cable tie, the court heard, and he was dragged into the kitchen. Mr Cruse said it was there that at least one officer repeatedly struck him to the head and face, and that two officers lifted him to his feet and slammed him into the fridge, which left a smudge of blood on the door. Mr Cruse said he never resisted arrest and never had his hands underneath him. He said he was struck up to 15 times, that he blacked out for a few seconds and was scared throughout. "I thought it wasn’t going to end. I thought it was just going to be the end of me. Something was going to happen," he said. Victoria Police in its defence says officers at the time regarded Mr Cruse as high risk due to an adherence to extremist ideology and had concerns he was carrying a weapon.

Ron Gipp, for Victoria Police, told the court one officer used four or five "hammer strikes" with the underside of his fist to subdue him. Police say Mr Cruse slipped and fell into the fridge and deny he was slammed. Mr Cruse’s lawyers say the use of force by police was a "gratuitous use of violence on a young man who was unable to defend himself". He told the court he was bleeding from his mouth, nose and cheekbone when arrested and underwent a CT scan at a hospital before being released back into custody. He was interviewed for 27 minutes and then released without charge. Mr Cruse’s lawyers say that after his arrest he developed chronic anxiety, a depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

He told the court the incident changed him from a happy, social man to an isolated introvert who was unable to show affection to his wife or young daughter and thought about the incident every day. ‘‘Everything has changed. I have become angry, I have become sad, I have become frustrated,’’ he said. He told the court one officer called him a "f---ing faggot" when he accidentally touched the policeman’s finger as cable ties were removed, that he was warned more beatings would happen, and that an officer told him "don’t say a f---ing word" to his mother as he was led outside. Mr Cruse said he knew the other men arrested that day and had been in contact with ASIO before the raid over his friendship with Numan Haider, who was shot dead by police in September 2014 when he stabbed two officers outside Endeavour Hills police station. Besim was jailed for 14 years for planning to behead a police officer at an Anzac Day service.

Harun Causevic and Mehran Azami were ultimately sentenced for weapons offences. Mr Cruse lodged complaints with the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and Victoria Police within months of his arrest. The case continues before Justice Melinda Richards.