Mahmoud Khayat was an innocent man wrongly accused of plotting to blow up an Etihad plane with a bomb hidden in a meat grinder, his barrister has told a Sydney jury.
Bruce Walmsley QC said his client's police interview showed a man coming to grips with a claim his brother Khaled was part of a plot that would lead to the murder of their sibling Amer and many other passengers on the flight.
His client seemed pre-occupied and had "a look of puzzlement" on his face which he wouldn't be doing if he were in cahoots with Khaled - unless he was like "Harrison Ford or some great actor playing a lie".
Mahmoud Khayat, 34, and Khaled Khayat, 51, have pleaded not guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to conspiring - between January 20 and July 29 in 2017 - to do acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.
The Crown alleges the siblings along with their brother Tarek Khayat, an ISIS terrorist in Syria, and an unknown person dubbed "the controller" plotted the bomb attack and a lethal poisonous gas attack on people in a confined space.
The alleged plan of putting the meat grinder in Amer's luggage was said to have been abandoned at Sydney airport after his baggage was deemed to be overweight.
Contrary to what Khaled Khayat told police, his barrister, Richard Pontello, has submitted that he never took the bomb to the airport and was actually trying to prevent a terrorist attack.
In his final submissions on Thursday, Mr Walmsley said Mahmoud Khayat gave police a detailed description of how he took his two siblings to the airport.
He said this would be the last thing he would have volunteered, at a time when police had not even outlined their allegations, if he was guilty.
Despite his client being "attacked vigorously, even punched" when they came to his house and arrested him, he gave them polite and informative answers in his interview which went for three days.
When police finally told him of the bomb plot claims, he responded by saying: "it's crazy", "if you've got evidence about (Khaled) I'm shocked" and "if they want to do something stupid like that and wreck the country, they need to be punished".
"He is an innocent man wrongly accused, understandably accused because of the evidence, we know that," Mr Walmsley said.
The trial continues before Justice Christine Adamson.
Australian Associated Press
