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[Lit]

More face charges over alleged suicide mission at army base

http://livenews.com.au/feature/more-fac ... 8/4/215064

Australian Associated Press

One man has faced court and several more could be charged over an alleged suicide plot to kill Australian soldiers in what police say would have been the deadliest terror attack on Australian soil.

Four people were arrested and more were being questioned after pre-dawn raids on 19 properties across Melbourne and regional Victoria foiled the plot to attack the Holsworthy army base, in western Sydney.

Nayef El Sayed, from Glenroy in Melbourne's north, appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with conspiring with four men and other unknown people to prepare an armed attack on Holsworthy, base to several thousand troops.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Acting Chief Commissioner Tony Negus said the men were allegedly planning a suicide shoot-out with automatic weapons.

"The men's intention was to actually go into the army barracks and to kill as many soldiers as they could before themselves, they were killed," Mr Negus told a packed media conference.

"Potentially this would have been, if it had been able to be carried out, the most serious terrorist attack on Australian soil."

He said investigators also believed the men had links to a north African terrorist group, al-Shabaab, which has links to al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the alleged plot shows the threat of terrorism is alive and well.

"There is an enduring threat from terrorism at home here in Australia as well as overseas," Mr Rudd told reporters in Cairns.

But there was no need for the national counter-terrorism level to change from medium - the level it had been since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Mr Rudd said.

He reassured all Australians that the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies were working hard to combat terrorism.

Following a seven-month joint operation, 400 AFP and Victoria Police officers launched raids at 4.30am (AEST) on Tuesday on properties in suburbs in Melbourne's north, inner city Carlton and Colac in the state's southwest.

The four arrested men, who are all Australian citizens of Lebanese and Somalian descent, are El Sayed and a 26-year-old Carlton man, a 25-year-old Preston man and a 22-year-old man from Meadow Heights.

Police are also interviewing a fifth man, a 33-year-old, who is already in custody in relation to other matters.

El Sayed, meanwhile, defiantly refused to stand when asked by Magistrate Peter Reardon in court on Tuesday.

El Sayed, 25, told Mr Reardon through his lawyer he stood for no man other than his own God.

Following the filing hearing, the big, bearded man, who sat between two security guards behind glass, was remanded in custody to reappear in court in October.

AFP agent David Kinton had earlier told the court police believed there was a conspiracy to commit an act in preparation of terrorism.

He said there were a number of phone intercepts in which another suspect, Saney Aweyz, allegedly raised the possibility of sending men to be involved in the civil war in Somalia.

He said police had also recorded other discussions about engaging in violent activity in Australia.

Mr Kinton said text messages seized by police involving other people discussed the address of a military base in Sydney and the name of a train station.

Intercepted phonecalls also revealed discussions about attempts to find an Islamic religious figure who would support a violent attack in Australia, he said.

A 35-year-old man from Lakemba, in Sydney's southwest, was assisting police with their inquiries into the alleged plot.

The Australian newspaper learnt of the investigation last week and agreed to hold off on publishing the story until Tuesday.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland said the paper hit the streets before the raids began, saying he was disappointed with the newspaper and state and federal authorities would investigate the leak.

"This, in my view, represents an unacceptable risk to the operation, an unacceptable risk to my staff," he said.

The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell said the story was held out of all early editions, and no newspaper that was sold before the raids had any mention of them.

The counter-terrorism operation, dubbed Operation Neath, involved officers from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, AFP, Victoria Police, NSW Police and the NSW Crime Commission.

[Lit]

Australian Terror Plot Foiled

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=80037

Australian police have prevented a terrorist plot to launch suicide attacks on an army base within the country. The plot was being planned by a Somali Islamist group, according to police officials.

Four men, all of whom were Australian citizens, were arrested in 19 pre-dawn raids across the Australian city of Melbourne. The men arrested were of Somali and Lebanese descent and aged in their early- to mid-twenties.

Several other people are still being questioned by police. The raids follow a seven-month sting operation. PM Kevin Rudd said the arrests served as "... a sober reminder that the threat of terrorism to Australia continues."

[Lit]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/au ... t-suspects
Australia terror suspects planned barracks suicide attack, say police

Four men arrested in Melbourne allegedly planned to enter army barracks with guns and kill as many soldiers as they could

Police in Australia said today they had foiled a plot to stage a suicide attack on an army barracks in suburban Sydney, after arresting four men with suspected links to a militant Somali Islamist group.

"The men's intention was to actually go into the army barracks and to kill as many soldiers as they could until they themselves were killed," said the country's federal police commissioner, Tony Negus.

The four, all Australian citizens of Somali or Lebanese descent, were arrested after 400 state and federal security officers raided 19 properties around the southern city of Melbourne before dawn. Several other people were also held and are being questioned.

The alleged plotters, aged between 22 and 26, are believed to be connected to al-Shabaab, a hardline Somali group linked to al-Qaida that has been fighting to overthrow Somalia's government.

The raids followed a seven-month surveillance operation, Negus said. One target identified by the group was Holsworthy barracks, an army facility on the south-western edge of Sydney, he said, and surveillance had been carried out at other bases.

"Police will allege that the men were planning to carry out a suicide terrorist attack on a defence establishment within Australia involving an armed assault with automatic weapons," Negus told reporters. "This operation has disrupted an alleged terrorist attack that could have claimed many lives," he said.

Australia has suffered few terrorist incidents on its soil, the best known being a 1978 bomb attack outside a Sydney hotel hosting a Commonwealth meeting, which killed two people. Ninety-one Australians died in the 2002 Bali bombings.

The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said the raids did not require an increase in the national terror alert level but were "a sober reminder" that the country faced a threat both at home and overseas.

Australia has greatly increased counter-terrorism measures since the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001. It is believed to be a potential target for Islamist groups, in part because it has taken an active role in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

One of the arrested men, 25-year-old Nayef el Sayed, from Glenroy, a suburb of Melbourne, appeared briefly before magistrates today charged with planning a terrorist attack. He refused to stand, his lawyer explaining that he would do so for no one but God, the city's Age newspaper reported.

A federal agent told the hearing that police had intercepted text messages about the Holsworthy base, including one saying: "I stalked around. It is easy to enter." CCTV footage showed one of the man there in March. The plotters had been attempting to find a cleric or another Islamic authority to give them approval for a violent attack, the agent said.

Al-Shabaab is seeking to establish a hardline interpretation of Islamic law in Somalia. Its members have forced women to wear veils and have cut off limbs for theft. The group has claimed responsibility for several bombings and shootings in Mogadishu against Ethiopian troops and Somali government officials, and has killed journalists and international aid workers.

In April, the US state department's annual terrorism report said the group was sheltering al-Qaida "elements" wanted for the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

[miltiades]

These sick individuals were given the opportunity to escape poverty stricken countries and improve their lives and those of their loved ones but the perverted ideology that they have decided to follow has reduced their lives to the lowest forms of humanity . Planning indiscriminate killings , murdering until they themselves are killed , believing that " their" god is on their side . How sick !

[Free Spirit]

These sick individuals were given the opportunity to escape poverty stricken countries and improve their lives and those of their loved ones but the perverted ideology that they have decided to follow has reduced their lives to the lowest forms of humanity . Planning indiscriminate killings , murdering until they themselves are killed , believing that " their" god is on their side . How sick !

Come on mate everyone is entitled to follow their national sports which in muslim countries just happens to be suicide bombing or flogging women.