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| Down Under |
| Australia: Terror suspects had a desire for holy war |
| 2009-08-05 |
| [ADN Kronos] Five men accused of planning a suicide attack on an Australian army base had a "desire to join a religious war," according to a leading expert. Greg Barton, director of Monash University's Centre for Islam in the Modern World. Barton spoke to Adnkronos International (AKI) after the five - Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese descent - were arrested in the southern city of Melbourne on Tuesday. Barton said the men had been seeking to join Islamist insurgents fighting in Somalia with the Al-Shabab group, accused of links to Al-Qaeda. They became frustrated when they failed to do so, he said. "When they couldn't get to Somalia, they thought about who they could attack in Australia, " Barton told AKI. "They sought to target the Australian army because it is involved in Afghanistan and Iraq. They planned to get some assault weapons and kill as many as they could." More than 400 officers were involved in raids on 19 properties across Melbourne before dawn on Tuesday. A Melbourne court was later told the men had sought a religious ruling to authorise their attack in Australia. "Although they had been radicalised, the best they could do was to attack army personnel," Barton said. "They clearly were not very competent. They had a desire to join a religious war." While Barton said there was no serious danger from this plot, it exposed how vulnerable young people were to recruitment by "predatory recruiters". "These young men were quite traumatised by war and they were befriended and groomed, not through a mosque," he said. The suspects are Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese descent - one 25-year old man, Nayaf El Sayed, has been charged with conspiring to plan a terrorist act and remanded in custody. It is alleged that five men were planning to carry out an armed attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney. Barton said the men's desire to fight in Somalia was consistent with what was being seen in the United States, where some 20 Americans, of Somali descent, had travelled to the war-torn country to fight. "In the last couple of months young men from stable backgrounds in Somali communities have gone to fight and some of them have ended up in morgues," he said. "Outside agents seem to be coming from Somalia and recruiting them and encouraging them to fight." Australian Federal Police also won an application to further question three other suspects who appeared in court but have not been charged. There are an estimated 2,000 foreign fighters in Somalia currently and Al-Qaeda is directly involved in the Islamist insurgency, Pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat last Friday quoted an unnamed Somalian intelligence source as saying. |
| Posted by:Fred |