There is still hope to rehabilitate a convicted terrorist, a lawyer has told Victoria's Supreme Court, but there are concerns his history of violent assaults remain a problem.
Hatim Moukhaiber, 30, and co-offenders Ahmed Mohamed, 26, and Abdullah Chaarani, 28, will be the first people sentenced in Australia for a successful terrorist attack over the firebombing of a Melbourne mosque in December 2016.
But Moukhaiber's barrister Felicity Gerry QC told a pre-sentence hearing on Monday that he was a "last minute recruit" on the day Faulkner's Imam Ali Islamic Centre was attacked, and he participated for the shortest possible time.
Mohamed and Chaarani were also convicted of a failed attack on the same mosque several weeks earlier.
"Rehabilitation can play a greater part where you don't have the most serious of terror offences," Ms Gerry said of the attack which destroyed the mosque but caused no death or injury.
But Justice Andrew Tinney raised issues with Moukhaiber's history including "significant prior convictions for violence".
He's previously been sentenced to two years in prison for recklessly causing serious injury to a man he punched while working as a security guard.
Ms Gerry said his prior offences were inextricably linked to his personal circumstances, but before she could explain further the hearing was cut short by a request from the men to return to prison early to break their Ramadan fast.
The barrister was earlier denied extra time to seek a psychological risk assessment to determine Moukhaiber's potential for rehabilitation.
Justice Tinney said there was no indication Moukhaiber had "gone anywhere down a path of de-radicalisation" while in custody since August 2017.
Ms Gerry argued that courses offering Moukhaiber insight into his beliefs and the chance to renounce or denounce them were not available prior to sentencing.
John Kelly SC made the same point for Mohamed, who will also be sentenced later this year over a plot to carry out a Christmas Day terror attack on Federation Square.
It was difficult to calibrate the extent of Mohamed's radicalisation, though he had been "attracted to aspects of the IS ideology", the lawyer said.
In 2015, Mohamed was photographed with an Islamic State flag and propaganda material was found on his phone.
Mr Kelly described the failed attack as "ill-prepared and amateurish" and no more than an intention to damage property.
Unlike Mohamed and Moukhaiber, Chaarani admitted he set fire to the mosque on both occasions and claimed it was an act of protest or advocacy.
His lawyer Patrick Tehan QC said there may be no clear reason why Chaarani committed the attack, but added he had been exposed through news and propaganda to war and other events in the Middle East.
"He was driven to a point that he felt he needed to do something about it," Mr Tehan said.
All three lawyers tried to argue there was a mitigating factor in that, as Sunni Muslims, the men had sought to intimidate the relatively small Shia Muslim community.
"(They had) awful motives, terrible motivations ... to frighten the Shia people," Justice Tinney said.
The pre-sentence hearing will continue at a later date, before the trio is sentenced.
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