Samir Atwani at Canterbury Boys High in Sydney.
A TOP Sydney school student was praised by Arthur Sinodinos and given $2000 by the federal government shortly before flying out of Australia to join Islamic State’s propaganda unit in Syria.
It is unclear whether Samir Atwani, who graduated from Sydney’s Canterbury Boys High last year after receiving a university admissions score of 96.25, used any of the government prize money to travel to Syria, where he became a video editor for the proscribed terrorist group.
Last week, The Australian revealed the man, now identified as Mr Atwani, had been studying electrical engineering at university but abandoned the degree when he went to Syria sometime in the past six months. He is now based in Deir Ezzor province. Mr Atwani was a high-achieving student at Canterbury Boys High, which former prime minister John Howard attended as a boy.
...One of the teenager’s closest friends said yesterday Mr Atwani, along with his online profiles, vanished in August, despite the teenager doing well at university, where he had started an engineering degree.
Mr Atwani is understood to have been born in Australia into a family descended from the [Arab] refugee community in Lebanon who fled Israel after the creation of the Jewish state.
Mr Atwani’s friend said the budding video editor had gone to Lebanon for some weeks with his father about 18 months ago, where they visited Palestinian relatives. He said Mr Atwani had occasionally mentioned Islamic State videos and praised them — not for their content, but for their high production quality.
...This month, Mr Atwani told The Australian he had volunteered to be in the media unit after Islamic State sought volunteers with experience in video production, and described watching an alleged “spy” being beheaded as “satisfying”....
