Australian man given curfew order

In the last few years, Australia has tightened up its anti-terror laws

An Australian man whose terror-related conviction has just been quashed has become the first person to have his movements restricted under new laws.

Police have issued Joseph Thomas with a control order, requiring him to stay in Melbourne under a curfew.

Thomas was sentenced to five years in jail for receiving funds from al-Qaeda and possessing a fake passport.

But an appeal court decided earlier this month that some of the evidence used against him was not admissible.

He was freed pending a possible retrial.

Interim measure

Joseph Thomas, a Muslim convert who has been nicknamed "Jihad Jack" by the Australian media, is the first person to be issued with the control order, which was brought in with other new security measures in December.

"It is an interim order until there is a court hearing on 1 September," the federal attorney-general's spokesman Michael Pelly told the Associated Press.

Thomas is currently on holiday in eastern Victoria, and will have to return to Melbourne as a result of the order, according to his brother Les.

"He was trying to spend some time getting to know his wife and kids," Les Thomas told reporters.

"He has a long way to go before he gets over what he has been put through."

In February a Melbourne court found Joseph Thomas guilty of accepting A$5,000 ($3,500) and a plane ticket from an al-Qaeda agent in Pakistan.

But on 18 August, the Victoria Court of Appeal ruled that some of the evidence used against him was not admissible at his trial, and overturned his five-year jail term.