Justin Beltagi is a member of the local Lebanese community in Young, who knew Haisem Zahab.
" It's pretty shocking. It's something that doesn't usually happen around town. You wouldn't expect it to happen around Young because it's a very quiet country town."
But New South Wales Police Minister Troy Grant says that geography is no longer a factor, when it comes to emerging threats such as IS.
"It doesn't matter where you live this day and age. The world is a lot closer, we are a connected world with technology. It has many great advantages but also many risks. And these are some of the risks that we have seen on our TV screens in recent years. The operational response to all these threats and emerging threats will continue to be resourced very thoroughly, and there will be no complacency just because you are in the bush."
Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan says the law has changed to reflect the seriousness of foreign incursion offences, and those charged with them, like Haisem Zahab, face life behind bars.
"The allegations are that he was helping the Islamic State develop very sophisticated technology. Firsty to identify and protect themselves from laser guided ammunitions. Secondly to actually have offensive misslie capability."
Terror expert Clive Williams from the Australian National University says practical training is valuable to extremists overseas.
"Islamic State will take advice from people like that, who are well expertised because quite often the level of expertise they have in Syria and Iraq is quite low. So, if they can get overseas so-called experts to advise them, that is useful to them."
Mr Keenan says the case is ongoing, and that while Mr Zahab is the first to be charged as part of an investigation - he might not be the last.
" Islamic State are very good at reaching out and identifying vulnerable people in the community. They can then isolate those people and take them through a radicalisation process. It can essentional go from zero to 100 very quickly.And as I said they use very sophisticated technology to use social media platforms and allow them to do that."
Federal Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has told Parliament the government is committed to eradicating the threat of extremism.
"We are working with intelligence agencies and governments around the world to make sure we can identify threats here and overseas and we will stamp out Isil and we will stamp out those who seek to do us harm."
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