Accused terror plotter's jail ordeal
By Marnie O'Neill
March 02, 2008 12:00am
Article from: The Sunday Telegraph
A YOUNG woman acquitted by a Supreme Court judge of plotting a terrorist attack in Sydney with her boyfriend has broken her silence for the first time.
A fragile but relieved Jill Courtney, 28, experienced her first day of freedom yesterday after enduring 23 horrific months inside Mulawa women's prison as a maximum-security inmate.
As she awaited trial, she lived alongside some of the State's most notorious murderers, including Katherine Knight, who famously skinned her husband before cooking his head in a pot.
Ms Courtney said that as a "category five" (maximum security) and "extreme high risk" prisoner, she spent most of her time in segregation.
Ms Courtney, a Muslim convert, and her partner, Hussan Kalache, were charged in March, 2006 over an alleged 2005 plot to detonate a car bomb in Kings Cross.
The matter was popularly known as in the media as "the love bomb case".
On Friday, Justice Peter Hidden directed a NSW Supreme Court jury to return not-guilty verdicts against the pair after deciding there was no evidence to support the charges.
"I am innocent and now it has been proven in court and my name has been cleared," Ms Courtney told The Sunday Telegraph at her father's southwest Sydney home yesterday.
"(But) I know that people are still going to look at me and think, 'She's a terrorist', because of all the media attention it received.
"I don't want to hide -- I have nothing to hide -- but I had a very bad time in jail and it's going to take a long time for me to recover from that experience."
Ms Courtney says her relationship with Kalache is stronger than ever after seven years together.
"We have both grown up a lot, both within ourselves and within our faith," she said.
Kalache is serving a 17-year sentence at Lithgow jail for murder.
Prosecutors had based their case against the couple on a series of phone conversations between them that were intercepted from inside Lithgow jail.
"It was rubbish," Ms Courtney said. "There were never any plans to bomb or blow up anything."
Ms Courtney's father, John, 76, said he suffered terribly during his daughter's incarceration.
"I worried all the time," he said.
"She went through hell in that place. People tell us we should try and get compensation but we're beyond that. We just want to get on with our lives.
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