Sydney terror case guilty pleas kept from jury

as posted here

Sally Neighbour | October 17, 2009

Article from: The Australian

AUSTRALIA'S marathon terror trial was a jigsaw puzzle made up of a mass of circumstantial evidence, the jury was told. What the jurors didn't know was that several crucial pieces were missing from the puzzle they had to assemble.

Originally nine men were to have faced trial. But over the past year, four of them pleaded guilty to a range of offences including carrying out acts in preparation for a terrorist act, and were sentenced to between three and 14 years in prison. These facts were subject to non-publication orders issued by judge Anthony Whealy, as they could have seriously prejudiced the remaining five men's right to a fair trial. Only now can these critical pieces of the puzzle be revealed.

The four men who pleaded guilty were named during the trial as co-conspirators.

Among them was a 28-year-old Lebanese-Australian man with a troubled family background and a record of serious drug abuse which led to severe mental illness. Another was a 33-year-old refugee from Bosnia, described by neighbours as an honest, reliable family man who had become a born-again Muslim.

The four co-conspirators were troubled souls who had turned to religion to straighten themselves out. A psychologist who interviewed the 28-year-old reported: "After he began to realise he had a problem, he began to hang out with Muslims. They reminded him of God. He attended the mosque regularly (because) this made him relaxed."

It was at the notorious Haldon Street prayer room in Lakemba, Sydney, a long-time target of ASIO, that he and his associates embraced the view that Islam was under attack and it was their obligation to undertake violent jihad to defend it.

A third co-conspirator, who cannot be named, told a prison psychologist he was inspired by the London bombings of July 7, 2005. The psychologist reported: "(He) thought if he could do something similar in Australia without hurting people, it would extend awareness of aggression against Muslims and alert Australians to oppose the government and stop the nations alliance with the US."

The evidence which prompted the co-conspirators to plead guilty was highly incriminating.

In February 2005 two of the men visited a militant cleric. The cleric was heard telling the 28-year-old man in a covertly recorded conversation: "If we want to die for jihad, we do maximum damage, maximum damage. Damage to their buildings with everything and damage to their lives, just to show them."

The following month, two of the others were bugged discussing how they needed to get fit in order to "shoot some motherf***ers". One of them was also heard discussing his attempts to make an improvised explosive device using copper pipe. In June 2005 the same man bought 7500 rounds of ammunition suitable for use in a semi-automatic weapon such as an AK-47.

In October 2005, the 28-year-old man was caught at a suburban Big W store in Sydney after stealing six clocks and 140 batteries which he had hidden in chip boxes. He confessed that this constituted an act in preparation for a terrorist act. Justice Whealy, who sentenced him last month, said the clocks and batteries were items capable of constructing six timed explosive devices.

He was sentenced to a minimum prison term of just under four years, discounted due to his mental illness. His non-parole period expired this week and he was released on Thursday.

The 33-year-old, whose admission to possessing ammunition constituted a relatively minor role in the conspiracy, was released in May this year after serving his sentence of three years and six months.

an associate, "I am going to blow up the nuclear place", according to a police statement tendered in evidence at the Central Local Court in Sydney in 2007. The rocket launchers, which are believed to have been hidden in PVC pipes and buried in bushland near Sydney, have never been found. This was not part of the evidence on which the man was tried.

The four men convicted with him had also been under watch for years. They were all regular attendees at the now notorious Haldon Street, Lakemba, prayer room, which has been closely monitored by the authorities since before September 11, 2001.

One of the accused, a 40-year-old, was well known to ASIO. A devout Muslim who lived with his Australian wife and four children in Lakemba, he first came to attention for his links with the Indonesian militant group Jemaah Islamiah. In 1999 he attended bush training camps in the Blue Mountains with a JI militant sent from Malaysia to conduct such training. He was also closely linked to the Frenchman Willie Brigitte, who was dispatched to Australia in 2003 by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar e Taiba to carry out a terror attack of great size, according to French prosecutors. He was one of Brigitte's key contacts in Australia, with phone intercepts revealing that Brigitte rang him 42 times. In July 2005 he was charged with lying to ASIO about his relationship with Brigitte, after admitting to only a handful of conversations with him.

His co-accused, a 36-year-old man and that man's nephew, 32, were also high on ASIO's watchlist, as they were both believed to have undergone military training with LET. Another Australian man has described traveling with the 36-year-old in 1999 to an LET camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where he says they were trained in weapons and explosives use. This was not illegal at the time as LET was yet to be proscribed by the Australian government and the assertion was not part of the evidence in the trial.

The 36-year-old was accused, along with the 44-year-old, of being one of the leaders, one of the thinkers behind the conspiracy. The 32-year-old nephew was claimed to have trained with LET in testimony provided by a Korean-American militant, Yong Ki Kwon, who said he had seen him at the camp in 2000 but admitted he could have been mistaken. The nephew denied having been there.

The fifth and youngest of the group, a 25-year-old, was also of keen interest to ASIO, mainly because of the activities of two of his brothers.

In addition to these five, another four men - all relative newcomers to the counter-terrorism watchlist - were named as co-conspirators. They were all young men with troubled backgrounds and a history of drug and alcohol use who had embraced radical Islam. The fourth was a migrant from eastern Europe, aged 33.

These four men did not face trial. Unbeknown to the jury, two of them pleaded guilty late last year to doing acts and possessing things connected with preparation for terrorist acts. Two others pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of possessing a thing to be used in a terrorist act.

The case unveiled over the last year in the Supreme Court at Parramatta began in July 2004, when ASIO and the AFP got authorisation to install telephone intercepts and listening devices and began physical surveillance of the nine men and their associates.

Within days of the operation starting, agents eavesdropping on their conversations learned that one of the men was in contact with a Muslim cleric who was well known for his militant views and who was also under surveillance. The cleric was overheard in an intercepted conversation with another follower in September 2004 discussing "doing something big ... like Spain," a reference to the 2003 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people.

The investigation cranked up a notch in December 2004, when three of the men were picked up by police riding a trail bike in the vicinity of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney. The 44-year-old man explained that they were test-riding a bike as a gift for his son, but police were not convinced, although there was no evidence the facility was a target.

As the months wore on, the alarm bells rang louder, triggered by a series of events. The 44-year-old purchased 10,000 rounds of ammunition from a Sydney gunshop. One man was monitored arranging the purchase of a similar quantity of ammunition and discussing experiments he had conducted in making an improvised explosive device using copper pipe.

Most disturbing of all, the cleric was overheard telling one conspirator in February 2005: "If we want to die for jihad, we do maximum damage, maximum damage. Damage to their buildings with everything and damage to their lives, just to show them."

In March 2005, four of the conspirators went on a camping trip to a remote bush property at Curranyalpa in western NSW, the first of two excursions described by the prosecutor as bonding trips. They were booked in false names using mobile phones, which were also registered under made-up names.

By June 2005, the pace of activity was accelerating. The 40-year-old and the 44-year-old placed an order for 55 items of laboratory equipment with a supplier. The next day two others were caught loading 15 boxes of ammunition into a car, having earlier been bugged talking about how they needed to get fit to "shoot some motherf--ers".

A series of raids was carried out by ASIO and the federal police in late June 2005 to "fire a shot across the bows of the organisation", in the prosecutor's words, and flush out more evidence. But the men only escalated their activities further.

There was a surge in covert SMS contact between two ringleaders using phones in false names and coded messages in which they called each other "darling" and "sweetie" when arranging to meet. The crown alleged the men were busy caching weapons in the bush, although no such stash was found.

The development that brought the investigation to its climax was when some of the men began to order bulk loads of chemicals.

In August 2004, 24 400ml bottles of hydrogen peroxide were found hidden on land behind one man's home. In late September another conspirator bought a further five bottles of the same chemical at two Sydney pharmacies. Six days later, two of the men went to Autoking in Punchbowl and ordered 200l of sulphuric acid. The same day the 25-year-old placed an order with another supplier for 200l of methylated spirits, 50l of hydrochloric acid, 25kg of citric acid and 20l of glycerine. In separate outings to two hardware stores, the 40-year-old ordered a further 200l of methylated spirits and 120l of acetone. The chemicals are known precursors for high-powered explosives such as HMTD and TATP, known as the mother of Satan.

By late 2005 ASIO and the AFP were convinced it was time to act. But it was still unclear exactly what offence the men had committed under the existing counter-terrorism laws, which required that a specific terrorist attack had to be conceived.

In early November, after prime minister John Howard was briefed on the investigation, federal parliament was recalled for an emergency session in which the wording of the terror laws was changed from "the terrorist act" to "a terrorist act". Four days later, on November 8, 2005, Australia's largest counter-terrorism operation moved into its final phase, and the arrests were made in a series of raids.

It took three years for commonwealth prosecutors to bring the case to court as they compiled what one defence counsel called a "tsunami" of evidence. It included more than 3000 exhibits, testimony from 300 witnesses, 18 hours of telephone intercepts and 30 days worth of surveillance material.

In September last year, the prosecution scored a major breakthrough when people started pleading guilty.

The guilty pleas were a coup. But unfortunately for the police and prosecutors, the four men who pleaded would not be interviewed or give evidence against their co-accused. So precisely what terrorist act they might have committed had their plans come to fruition remains a mystery. And the case against the five men left to face trial remained entirely circumstantial.

Prosecutor Richard Maidment SC admitted there was no smoking gun and no clear evidence as to what action was to be carried out and what targets were to be selected. The case, he said, was a large mosaic, a jigsaw puzzle for the jury to put together.

After 40 weeks of hearings and 23 days of deliberation, the 12 men and women of the jury ultimately accepted the crown version of events

as posted here