FOR months, the nine Sydney men played a game of cat and mouse - aware ASIO was watching their every move while they continued to quietly hoard high-powered weapons and ammunition in preparation for an attack on a scale this city has never seen and hopefully never will.
They placed orders at their local hardware stores for bulk amounts of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide and other bomb ingredients, leaving false names and numbers and always paying in cash.
They went on trips to remote Outback properties where they shot up the trees as target practice. The readers among them kept copies of the Howard government's anti-terror laws handy.
They thought they were safe because their plan had never been set down in writing, meaning there was no agreed target or methodology police could pin on them.
They were wrong.
In November 2005, the Government introduced a last-minute change to the legislation allowing police to carry out arrests if they had reasonable grounds to suspect a terror plot was being planned.
The changes triggered a frenzy of chatter between the men and their wives - one of whom was heard by ASIO saying, "They're gonna raid us."
The men began buying lengths of PVC pipe and sealing tape in preparation for burying the evidence they had amassed in a military-style weapons cache.
Police knew they had to move fast and over the weekend of November 6 and 7 in 2005, they put together one of the most successful joint operations ever carried out between ASIO, Australian Federal Police and NSW Police.
In a series of co-ordinated raids across Sydney's southwest, officers from the anti-terror operation swooped on the men's homes in the early hours of November 8, combing their properties for evidence of a terror plot. Rifles, pistols and a huge quantity and range of ammunition were seized, along with drums of chemicals and an unusually large assortment of batteries.
Many of the items bagged as evidence that day were likely to be found in any ordinary household, like barbecue starters, torches, camping gear, CDs and literature.
Nevertheless, police had enough to charge eight of the men - and about a month later they charged the ninth - with conspiring to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act or acts between July 2004 and November 2005.
In a landmark verdict, a 12-member jury yesterday validated the authorities' suspicions by finding five of the men guilty.
The Supreme Court trial opened in November last year before Justice Anthony Whealy in a purpose-built courtroom in the new Western Sydney Justice Precinct in Parramatta.
Before the Crown opened its case, Justice Whealy urged the jury not to speculate about why the fellow conspirators were not facing trial along with the main accused.
As revealed today, these men pleaded guilty to the lesser crime of knowingly possessing items connected with the preparation of a terrorist act and two of them have already been released on parole.
With time served since his arrest in November 2005, one of the men who pleaded guilty to storing ammunition and explosives in his home, was freed in May after three years and six months in jail. He will serve the balance of nine months on parole.
Another was released on Thursday after three years and 11 months in custody and will serve the balance of one year and three months on parole.
More than 3000 exhibits were tendered during the trial of the five men found guilty yesterday. The jury also heard oral evidence from more than 300 witnesses.
Crown Prosecutor Richard Maidment urged the jury to view the many thousands of pieces of evidence, including the seemingly innocuous household items seized - as parts of a jigsaw puzzle which fit together to form a powerful circumstantial case.
The jury heard the men were all devout Muslims who met at a prayer hall on the third level of Lakemba Arcade on Haldon St, Lakemba. They all subscribed to a fundamentalist brand of Islam espoused by a self-styled preacher, who claimed the Australian Government's actions in sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan was sufficient reason under Islamic law to carry out violent jihad.
Even though there was no formal or written agreement of the conspiracy between the men, he said each of them took steps to advance it. In doing so, he said the men intended that the act, when carried out, would cause damage to property and create a serious risk to the safety of the public.
The court heard the men each had different roles and used coded SMS messages, using the false names "Sandra" and "Dave" and peppering them with endearments like "babe" and "darling".
Some of the men gathered weapons and ammunition to advance the agreement, while others placed bulk orders of chemicals in false names to make the explosive TATP - known as "Mother of Satan" - used in the London tube and bus bombings in 2006.
At least four of them went on two trips to remote properties in outback NSW where, Mr Maidment claimed, military-style training camps were held.
as posted here
No comments:
Post a Comment
comments will be moderated before posting, allow some time before they appear if they are accepted ...