A group of Islamic extremists who were detained today planned a suicide attack on an Australian army base with the aim of killing as many soldiers as possible, a court was told. One man has been charged with planning a terrorist act and police have been granted extra time to question another three men arrested this morning in a series of counter-terrorism raids across Melbourne.
About 400 police officers and members of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation swooped on 19 properties, detaining several men, all Australian citizens of Somali and Lebanese background, in the pre-dawn raids.
A fifth man, in custody on other matters, was also being questioned and police have not ruled out more arrests.
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Police allege the group was at an advanced stage of preparing to storm army barracks in Sydney and Melbourne in retaliation for Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, said the discovery of the plot would not force him to pull troops out of Afghanistan.
He admitted the Afghan operation, which claimed its eleventh Australian life last month, was unpopular but said that it was necessary to cut off militant training opportunities.
"If we're to deal with the threat of terrorism at its various levels we must be dealing with where terrorists are trained," Mr Rudd said.
Members of the hardline group had been observed carrying out surveillance of Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney and of military bases in Victoria. Electronic surveillance also picked up discussions about how to obtain weapons to carry out what would have been the worst terror attack on Australian soil.
"The men’s intention was to get into the army barracks and kill as many as they could," Tony Negus, acting Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, said. "They were planning to carry out a suicide terror attack. . . a sustained attack on military personnel until they themselves were killed.”
Andrew Scipione, Commissioner of New South Wales Police, said that a terrorist attack on Sydney's Holsworthy Barracks was "likely imminent'' when police carried out the raids.
Melbourne Magistrates' Court heard how, during a seven-month-long investigation dubbed Operation Neath, police had gathered "voluminous" amounts of telephone intercept recording material, including text messages, about the planned attack.
"To become self-proclaimed martyrs?" Peter Reardon, the magistrate, asked.
"Yes," Mr Robinson replied.
Text messages uncovered by investigators were read out to the court, including one sent from another suspect on March 24 that read: "Can you give me the address of the Australian A and the name of the train station."
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Mr Robinson said another text message had been sent from a pay phone on March 27 giving directions to the Holsworthy base from the train station.
He said that CCTV footage showed that the suspect had "attended" the Holsworthy base on March 28. The man then allegedly sent a text message which read: "I strolled around... it is easy to enter."
Police believe the cell is linked to the Somali-based terror organisation al-Shabaab, a militant group affiliated to al-Qaeda. Members of the group recently travelled to Somalia to undergo training with the organisation, according to The Australian newspaper.
Operation Neath was launched after police intercepted a phone call between an Australian-Lebanese man they had been monitoring, and a Somali living in Melbourne, in which the Lebanese asked for help to travel to Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab, The Australian reported.
The Lebanese man’s calls had been monitored after he came to the attention of the authorities for espousing extremist views at his local mosque in Melbourne. Over the following months the police became increasingly concerned as the group discussed ways in which they could obtain weaponry and planned to seek a religious ruling supporting an attack on Holsworthy barracks.
Australian security services have been concerned for some time about the growing threat of extremist attacks on home soil.
Last year the federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, warned that a terrorist threat was just as likely "to emanate from disgruntled and alienated Australian youth as from an overseas organisation".
The most recent report by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organsiation (ASIO) also outlined the threat from "a small but potentially dangerous minority of Australians who hold extremist views and are prepared to act in support of their beliefs".
However, while police have suspected for some years that there were links between a minority of the country’s 16,000-strong Somali community and militants in their homeland the links had never been proven. A police investigation into extremist activities within the community in 2007 failed to establish any wrongdoing.
A terror analyst criticised the Australian government today for being complacent in its attitude to the terror threat at home.
Dr Anthony Bergin, director of research at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told The Times: "This plot underlines the need for a comprehensive counter-radicalisation strategy in Australia."
Despite security forces acknowledging that a growing number of alienated young Australian Muslims were being drawn to the extremist cause, he said, the government had developed no strategy that would give it an insight into how serious the problem might be.
"We simply don't know what is going on in those at-risk groups in Muslim neighbourhoods," said Dr Bergin. "We really lack a body of knowledge that would give us a good indication of what is going on at the local level."
Dr Bergin pointed out that a speech by Mr McClelland two weeks ago underlining the need for the government to focus on the risk from home grown extremists was the first speech by a minister devoted to the subject since the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
"This plot will provide a wake-up call that we can't be complacent about these issues," he said.
Australia has not suffered a peacetime attack on home soil since a bombing outside a Sydney hotel during a Commonwealth meeting in 1978 that killed three people. But 95 Australians have been killed in bomb attacks in Indonesia since 2002.
Operation Neath is the second largest terror investigation in Australia. In February, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, a fanatical cleric who planned to wage jihad by launching "terrible acts of violence", was sentenced to at least 12 years in jail after becoming the first person in Australia to be convicted of leading a terrorist organisation.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6738218.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2
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