Al-Qaeda leaders talked about destroying American and Israeli airlines flying to Australia a year before the September 11 attacks in the United States, a court heard yesterday. The strikes were part of a plot outlined in early 2000 in the Pakistan city of Karachi by al-Qaeda's second in command, Mukhtar, in talks with alleged al-Qaeda conspirator Jack Roche.
| Is this Mukhtar a new character or is he just another pseudonym for Ayman or Khalid? |
Roche, 50, a British-born Islamic convert, has denied plotting with senior al-Qaeda officials to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra, with intent do endanger lives.
| "No, no! We wudn't gonna hurt nobody!" |
On day six of his trial in the Perth District Court, the jury was played part of a nine-hour videotape of an interview with Roche conducted by two Australian Federal Police agents in November 2002. Roche says in the interview that he and Mukhtar also talked about the assassination of Americans and Israelis in Australia and how Melbourne Jewish leader Joe Gutnick would be a possible target.
| "We wudn't gonna hurt him, just bump 'im off!" |
"Mukhtar was thinking about any airlines that regularly came to Australia from either the US or Israel," Roche says in the recording. "But he mainly was interested in the American airlines that flew into Australia and people who could be targeted." The talks with Mukhtar took place as Roche was making his way from a meeting in Malaysia with alleged Bali bombing mastermind Hambali to Afghanistan where, the court has been told, he met Osama bin Laden. "The idea was to either destroy these targets or get rid of a person who was considered to be high up in the organisation or administration of the US or Israel... in Australia," says Roche of the meeting with Mukhtar. Asked if a person had been nominated as a target, Roche says: "I believe Mukhtar had heard of Gutnick, Joe Gutnick, and he was asking who he was." Roche told Mukhtar he did not know much about the AFL, but that Mr Gutnick was the head of an AFL club in Melbourne and that he had contributed to Benjamin Netanyahu's political campaigns in Israel.
| "And for that, he must be killed!" |
During the interview, Roche also identified Abu Bakar Bashir as the leader of the South-East Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah. He said Hambali and Bashir were neighbours and he had "popped around" to Bashir's house for a cup of tea on at least two occasions when he was staying with Hambali. "Ultimately, he's (Bashir) the one who makes decisions regarding the structure of JI in South-East Asia." Roche said Bashir assumed the top role after the death of Abdullah Sungkar, to whom Roche had made a personal pledge that cemented his membership in JI in late 1996. Roche also named an English-born migrant to Australia as the man the terrorist leadership wanted to bring to Afghanistan for training. He identified the man as Andrew Wenham, aka Abu Ismail, a Perth-based convert to Islam who ran a roofing business. |
