A Muslim cleric and six followers were jailed for up to 15 years yesterday after being found guilty of forming an Australian terror cell that plotted bomb attacks designed to kill thousands.
“The organization fostered and encouraged its members to engage in violent jihad and to perform a terrorist act,” Judge Bernard Bongiorno told Victoria state’s Supreme Court after Australia’s biggest terror trial.
Firebrand cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 48, was jailed for 15 years, of which he must serve at least 12 years, while his followers received minimum terms of between four and seven-and-a-half years.
Algerian-born Benbrika had urged them to target large crowds at football matches or a train station to pressure the Australian government to withdraw its soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, the court heard.
Benbrika had said it was “permissible to kill women, children and the aged,” prosecutors said.
Material seized from the group included bomb-making instructions and video tapes with messages from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The men referred to themselves as mujahidin, or holy warriors, and considered violent jihad an integral part of their religious obligations, Bongiorno said.
Describing Benbrika as an “unskilled fanatic,” Bongiorno said he sought explosives training from an undercover police officer and “all evidence points to the conclusion that he maintains his position with respect to violent jihad.”
While the group had not chosen a specific target or carried out an attack, the judge said they had shown no remorse, and did not appear to have renounced their beliefs.
Remy Ven de Wiel, defending Benbrika, argued the defendants were not terrorists but young men learning about Islam from a self-styled sheikh who “couldn’t organize a booze-up in a brewery.”
He told the court his client was a braggart and did nothing more than talk about jihad, or holy war.
“The Muslims in Australia have a sense of powerlessness and political impotence and they express themselves,” Van de Wiel had told the jury.
After eight months of evidence the jurors found Benbrika guilty of directing a terrorist organization and the other six — Aimen Joud, 24, Fadl Sayadi, 28, Abdullah Merhi, 23, Ezzit Raad, 27, Ahmed Raad, 25 and Amer Haddara, 29 — of being members.
Ahmed Raad, Ezzit Raad and Joud were also found guilty of intentionally making funds available to a terrorist organization, while Joud and Benbrika were found guilty of possessing a CD connected with the preparation of a terrorist act.
Bongiorno jailed Joud and Ahmed Raad for a minimum seven-and-a-half years each, finding them most culpable after Benbrika. Sayadi will spend at least six years in prison, Ezzit Raad five years and nine months, Haddara four-and-a-half years and Merhi four years.
An eighth man, Izzydeen Atik, pleaded guilty in August 2007 and was jailed for five-and-a-half years.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS