Mental illness

The former Supreme Court justice who presided over Sharrouf’s 2005 terror trial says he suffered from chronic schizophrenia and was previously a petty criminal and long-term user of ecstasy, LSD and amphetamines. Anthony Whealy:

He was a drop-out at school. He was ultimately expelled at a very early age for poor behaviour. He soon took up drugs and became involved in petty criminality and it seems that part of the people he started to mix with introduced to him a very extreme form of radical Islamic religion.

Whealy says Sharrouf was delusional and ruled unfit to plead in the 2005 terror trial and was incapable of understanding what the case was about. He believes this has not changed and that Sharrouf’s apparent radicalism is a mask for the illness:

Sharrouf now says, of course, that he tricked everybody, but I don’t believe that for a minute. He was a very ill man and I believe he still is.