More Australians are getting terrorist training overseas, the chief of the country's spy agency said, adding that his organisation had searched for them on every continent except Antarctica. "While small in absolute terms, the number of Australians confirmed or assessed to have undertaken terrorist training continues to grow," Dennis Richardson said in a speech late Wednesday. "Overwhelmingly, those people in Australia who have undertaken terrorist training have done so beyond Southeast Asia and their continuing links and motivations primarily come from beyond the region."
| Let me guess, someplace with a lot of sand and oil? |
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) chief said Australia had been a potential target for Al-Qaeda for at least four years and would continue to be so. In the past three years, an attack on the Australian High Commission in Singapore had been thwarted but the bombings of Bali nightclubs in 2002 and an attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta in September had succeeded, he said. Plans for an attack in Australia involving Frenchman Willie Brigitte, a convert to Islam deported to France last year and held since then under France's tough anti-terrorism laws, had also been thwarted.
A raid in Pakistan in late 2002 uncovered details about a number of airports being cased before September 11, 2001, including one in Australia, Richardson said. Since the 2001 attacks in the United States, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation had prevented 10 people suspected of terrorism activities from entering Australia, he said. And Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had been advised to cancel or deny passports to 20 people seeking to leave the country. So far only Muslim convert Jack Roche in the western city of Perth has been convicted and sentenced for terrorism offences, in relation to a planned attack on the Israeli embassy in Canberra. Four others were awaiting trial for alleged offences in Sydney, Richardson said. "Investigations are continuing which could lead to the arrest of others," he said, adding that the spy agency had been working to identify Australians worldwide connected to terrorism. "That work has taken us from Indonesia to inside the Arctic circle and to all continents but Antarctica," Richardson said. | "inside the Arctic circle", I'm guessing he's talking about the Scandinadian countries. Unless there's a Aussie al-Qaeda cell working on the North Slope. |
"It is work which continues to this day. Four Australians were in custody overseas either awaiting trial for alleged terrorist offences or serving a sentence for one, Richardson said. Two Australians, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, are in US detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hicks, charged with a series of terrorism related and other charges, is awaiting trial by a military commission. |