A convicted terrorist says he has renounced Islamic State but is still in isolation in jail after being accused of radicalising other people.
A jury in 2023 found Aran Sherani guilty of preparing for a terrorist act after he filmed himself pledging allegiance to the organisation while armed with a knife and bragging he was on the run from police.
"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 said, holding up a knife to the camera in footage filmed in 2021.
He later stood with the knife in a grassy field in what his lawyers said was a bid to be shot by police - potentially fatally - for his ideological cause.
But he ultimately abandoned his plan and ran before he was arrested.
Sherani later pleaded guilty to being a member of a terrorist organisation.
He also admitted it was him captured in video setting two bushfires in scrub in Melbourne's north in February 2021, declaring civilians would be "tasted by the fire of Allah".
He and his older brother Ari Sherani - who admitted he filmed one of the videos - were acquitted of attempting to commit terrorist acts.
Addressing a plea hearing at the Supreme Court of Victoria on Tuesday, Aran Sherani renounced Islamic State and - when asked how the organisation treated non-Muslim people - said, "they're very barbaric".
“I've distanced myself from them completely and I oppose them philosophically in every way,” he told Justice Amanda Fox.
“Their idea of jihad is very rigid, which - recently since I've been in prison - I've come to understand it in a different way."
The organisation's focus was exclusively on warfare and fighting, he said.
“Even if that meant they would be rulers of a wasteland that would be fine by them,” Sherani said.
Sherani was transferred back to the Port Phillip Prison's Charlotte unit and put in solitary confinement in October 2023 after being accused of recruiting or radicalising people but without any specific detail, he said.
His brain has "turned to mush" since, he said.
Sherani is ethnically Kurdish and identifies with the historically oppressed and stateless people.
He has said he thought Islamic State could help overthrow what he regarded as a corrupt regime in Kurdistan.
His lawyers have argued he intended to prove himself to IS in the videos with the goal of leaving Australia.
Justice Fox on Tuesday questioned the viability of Sherani's plan, which his lawyers admitted was irrational.
IS overwhelmingly attacked the Kurdish people and it was impossible for the judge to reconcile how Sherani believed the culture could survive an IS caliphate, she said.
Sherani was desperate for a sense of identity and purpose, and the bushfire videos were not intended to hurt anyone - only to become an IS member, his barrister Patrick Doyle SC said on Tuesday.
At the time, Sherani was naive to think police would shoot him for only threatening them with a knife, the barrister said.
“By the time police arrived, he's on the other side of the creek. He's not seeking them out. He knows they're coming," Mr Doyle told the court.
Sherani was the only person going to die if he went through with his plan to threaten police, Mr Doyle said.
He was between 18 and 19 years' old when he committed the crimes, which his youth and immaturity contributed to, the barrister said.
Sherani told the court he wanted to study a Bachelor of Arts upon his release and one day start a family.
Justice Fox will sentence Sherani at a later date.
