The defendants charged with terrorist-related offenses in Australia last week had been stockpiling large quantities of chemicals and other materials used to make powerful explosives, and may have been planning an attack on a nuclear reactor, according to a police statement that was made public today.
During the search of one of the men's homes, the police found a computer memory stick that had instructions in Arabic for the manufacture of a highly sensitive explosive, triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, according to the statement, which is a summary of the state's case.
Often referred to as the "Mother of Satan," it is easy to make, has been popular with Middle East suicide bombers and was the detonator used by the so-called "shoe bomber", Richard C. Reid, who unsuccessfully attempted to detonate an explosive in his shoe during a Paris-to-Miami flight in Dec. 2001.
Following an 18-month investigation and the largest anti-terrorism raids in the country's history, 8 men have been charged in Sydney, and 11 in Melbourne.
Lawyers for the defendants, and critics of the government, have charged that the arrests were politically motivated, coming when Prime Minister John Howard has asked parliament to enact a new anti-terrorism bill that will give the police sweeping new powers to arrest suspected terrorists.
If the allegations in the Statement of Facts released today are true, the case presents a colorful, if chilling look into a home-grown terrorist network, and how relatively easy it is to prepare an attack. All of the materials found in the defendants' homes were available commercially, and had innocent uses.
The defendants used multiple mobile phones - 10 were found in one house, 6 in another, and 5 in a third - some registered in false names, to order the chemicals and to send covert SMS messages to each other, according to the statement.
There is nothing in the 20-page statement indicating that any of the Sydney defendants had trained with Al Qaeda. One of the men trained with a Pakistani group, Laskar-I-Taiba, which has been declared a terrorist organization, the statement says.
The statement says that when a group of the defendants went hunting and camping in the remote Australian Outback on two occasions earlier this year, this was just a guise for training for jihad and terrorist attacks.
The Sydney defendants range in age from 24 to 40, are either Australian citizens or long-time permanent residents and are of Lebanese, Indonesia and Yugoslavian descent, according to the information made public today. One has four children. The men were followers of a radical imam in Melbourne, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who is one of the Melbourne defendants, the statement says.
When one of the defendants told Mr. Benbrika he wanted to be a martyr, Mr. Benbrika replied, according to the police statement, "If we want to die for jihad, we have to have maximum damage. Maximum damage -- damage to their buildings, everything. Damage their lives, to show them."
A few days before the arrests last week, Australian officials said that an attack was imminent.
But the Statement of Facts, which was presented to the Sydney court last Friday, gives no indication that the men were close to an attack. The Sydney defendants have not been charged with planning an attack, but with "conspiracy to do an act in preparation for a terrorist act," according to the charges. The Melbourne defendants have been charged only with membership in a terrorist organization.
"I find it less than convincing," Adam Houda, a lawyer for the Sydney defendants, said about the Statement of Facts. "If that's their strongest case, they're in a lot of trouble," he said in a telephone interview.
Much of the material found in the defendants' homes "can be innocently explained," Mr. Houda said.
Indeed, the police statement says that while the material the defendants purchased or tried to purchase indicate they were preparing to make TATP, the chemicals "have other legitimate uses."
The police statement lists only one possible target: the nuclear power plant at Lucas Heights, which is about 20 miles south of the Sydney central business district.
Three of the defendants were seen near the plant last December, and were stopped by the police, according to the police statement released today. They had a trail bike and claimed they were in the area to ride it, the statement says. Interviewed separately by the police at the time, the three men gave conflicting statements.
The police statement alleges that the men were members of the local branch of a fundamentalist Sunni group, whose spiritual leader is Mr. Benbrika.
Through coded text messages on mobile phones, they arranged covert meetings in public places during the early morning hours, the statement said. Sometimes, the meetings were cancelled when the men discovered they were being followed. Several of the defendants had been under surveillance by Australian intelligence agents for more than a year.
During the raids last week, the police found pistols, a shotgun, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a rifle scope, digital timers, and jihadist literature including a video cassette, "Sheikh Osama's Training Course." |
THE Australian mother whose two sons are in a Yemeni jail on terrorist charges was suspected of being involved in a Jemaah Islamiah plot to attack the Sydney Olympics. The Daily Telegraph understands Rabiah Hutchison, reportedly a former Mudgee dope-smoking hippie and now a radical Muslim who wears a burqa, was married to Indonesian Abdul Rahim Ayub. 
Two of the Australian terrorism suspects arrested in Yemen are reportedly the young sons of a Jemaah Islamiah agent. 
FORMER Qantas baggage handler and terror suspect