A Kurdish-Australian man who admitted to knowingly being a member of a government-listed terrorist organisation "has given more to the world of ideas than the prospects of violence", a Sydney judge says.
Renas Lelikan, 40, previously pleaded guilty to membership of the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK while in Turkey, Iraq and elsewhere between April 2011 and August 2013.
Justice Lucy McCallum in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday said it was clear Lelikan "was not a militant", convicting him and imposing a three-year community correction order including 500 hours of community service work.
The agreed facts state Lelikan spent a significant amount of his time in the mountains of northern Iraq and Turkey with the military arm of the PKK, wearing the uniform and carrying firearms, ammunition and grenades.
Renas Lelikan leaves court in Sydney in April. Source: AAP
But the judge described the task of assessing his role as "complex and highly contextual" and characterised his behaviour as "towards the lowest order of seriousness".
"Mr Lelikan spent much of his time writing, taking photographs, searching for the body of his dead brother and living among displaced Kurds," the judge said.
"His writings were philosophical and almost poetic. They did not seek to incite ... extremist ideology."
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One of Lelikan's brothers had been killed by Turkish militia while fighting in the mountains as a PKK guerilla.
Justice McCallum said Lelikan was not a leader within the group and required permission to travel with them.
"His role was that of a passive, sympathetic observer who sought to chronicle their struggle," she said.
Lelikan was also previously accused of travelling to the Turkey-Iraq border area to fight for the PKK, but a jury was discharged after more than four weeks of deliberations at his 2018 trial.
