Saturday, December 25, 2010
AT the beginning and end of the trial, Victorian crown prosecutor Nick Robinson SC said the case against five men charged with planning a terrorist attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney was "largely circumstantial".
He said it was "like a mosaic or jigsaw puzzle, you put small pieces together and you can see in the end the image or understanding of what it was", or like the strands of a piece of rope, gradually wound together until "you get a strong enough rope".
Eight days after a Victorian Supreme Court jury retired to consider whether that rope held together sufficiently for a conviction, it returned yesterday with a divided verdict.
Three of the alleged conspirators, Saney Aweys, Wissam Fattal and Nayef El Sayed, were found guilty. But two, Abdirahman Ahmed and Yacqub Khayre, were found not guilty.
In court, the men embraced in the dock, those who had been found guilty slapping on the back those found not guilty.
Fattal addressed the jury, proclaiming Islam as the true religion. The most belligerent of those charged during the trial, sometimes rising for the judge and jury and sometimes not, he said: "I respect you. Islam is a true religion, thank you very much."
When Ahmed and Khayre left the court, they were unsmiling. Pressed for comment, Ahmed said, "I think justice has been served."
Asked about those who were convicted, he replied: "It's unfortunate, but this is God's will. I just want to tell them to be patient. Inshallah, they will get out one day. We still continue the fight for the other fellows."
He said he wanted to go home and see his family. "See my daughters. Been a long time," he said.
The five men were arrested in pre-dawn raids on August 4 last year in an undercover operation codenamed Neath, involving about 400 officers from the Australian Federal Police as well as Victorian and NSW police.
The Australian learned of the alleged plot during the previous week, but held the story for five days at the request of the AFP, eventually going to press on the morning of the raids.
No weapons were found in the raids. Police alleged the men planned to buy automatic weapons and to attack the Holsworthy base, killing as many soldiers as possible before being killed themselves, but lacked the money or connections to do so.
Melbourne's Somali community came out strongly in support of the Somalis among the accused, describing them as "good boys from good families", and denied sections of their community had been radicalised by the extremist group al-Shabaab.
From the outset, it was clear the Somali community had trouble believing that Ahmed, in particular, was a terrorist. When they came to trial, the men pleaded not guilty.
The court heard that Fattal was under surveillance from September 2008, that the men knew each other from the Preston mosque, in Melbourne's north, and that some of the men harboured deep antipathy towards Australia, with Aweys describing Australians as infidels and declaring Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires were a punishment from Allah, although police intercepts also overheard him singing the national anthem.
It was alleged the men sought a fatwa, or religious ruling, from militant clerics in Somalia giving them permission to attack the Holsworthy base.
Robinson said it was clear from intercepted phone calls that Fattal at least wanted to die a martyr's death.
Outlining the roles played by each of the accused, Robinson said Fattal went to the base and reported it was a suitable target; El Sayed sought a fatwa through Aweys and Khayre; Aweys spoke to two sheiks seeking the fatwa; Khayre went to Somalia seeking a fatwa and returned, saying, "I've got a fatwa, it's 100 per cent go", which others in the group did not believe, while Ahmed "pursued the conspiracy" despite saying it would be a disaster.
While defence lawyers said the question was never resolved, Robinson said, "This isn't about what the answer is, it's about asking a question . . ."
The court heard that Fattal (also known as Omar) was a well-known kick-boxer who was born in Tripoli in Lebanon and arrived in Australia in about 2003.
He was divorced, with a four-year-old daughter, whom he adored.
He was heard on police intercepts telling his mother, "This terrestrial life is pain, Mum."
In November 2008, he told his mother: "Supplicate for me to be killed at the hands of the False Messenger . . . for me to be the martyr at the hands of the False Messenger."
Aweys, a father of four, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in May 1983 and arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1998, when he was 15. The family left Somalia after his father was killed in the civil war. Asked by police what it was like growing up in Somalia, he said: "Have you seen Black Hawk Down? That's what it was like growing up in Somalia."
Khayre was also born in Mogadishu, in 1987, and came to Australia in 1994 via a Kenyan refugee camp at about the age of seven.
Ahmed was also born in Somalia, where members of his family had been killed and burned in wells. He came to Australia when he was about 10, was married with young children, was in the final year of a civil engineering course and worked as a taxi driver.
Alone among the accused, El Sayed was born in Melbourne.
The men's lawyers argued that Fattal was set up by an undercover police officer; that Aweys sought to manage the pursuit of a fatwa rather than promote it; that El Sayed inquired about a fatwa involving fraud, not violence; that Khayre went to Somalia not to obtain a fatwa as alleged but to fight in the civil war, before returning disillusioned; and that Ahmed opposed the plan from the outset.
Lawyer John O'Sullivan said while Ahmed knew people connected to the Preston mosque were debating whether an attack in Australia was permissible, he was opposed to it, described the alleged plotters as crazy guys and warned it would end in catastrophe. "If the sheik says to the guys enter this place . . . it's a catastrophe, brother," Ahmed told Aweys during an intercepted call.
O'Sullivan said while it was clear Ahmed had not told the truth during his police interview, his untruthful answers about Somalia, or the question of a fatwa, were all explicable on the basis that he did not want to say too much about Somalia or create a false impression that he was involved in terrorism.
George Georgiou, for Khayre, the youngest of the accused men, likened the prosecution case to the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil Fawlty was desperate not to mention the war, although there was abundant evidence that Khayre might have been in Somalia for military training and to join the civil conflict.
He said that nothing of substance was found by police when they raided Khayre's home at about 4.40am on August 4 last year and that during a 13-hour police interview after his arrest - in which he lied about travelling to Somalia - he expressed no hostility towards Australia.
"He told the police that he never felt threatened here, that he had never experienced racism, that he loved it here and that Australia took him and his family in," Georgiou said.
Lawyer Patrick Tehan QC, for Fattal, began his address with the words: "Mr Foreman, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, assalamu allaykum (peace be upon you)." He said Fattal was set up by an undercover police officer working under the alias of Hamza, who became Fattal's "very best friend".
Tehan said Hamza "completely conned, deceived and manipulated Fattal" and directed him to go to Holsworthy looking for work after he fled Melbourne, where he was wanted in relation to an assault. He said there was "a real smell about this case".
Michael O'Connell SC, for Aweys, said the alleged conspiracy was racked by disagreement between the accused men and "disagreement is the antithesis of conspiracy".
O'Connell said Aweys "never agreed to prepare for or plan in any way a terrorist act" and while he might have been frustrated by his life in Australia and occasionally "talked tough", he did not feel the level of hatred towards Australia "necessary to motivate someone to commit a terrorist act". He argued, unsuccessfully, that Aweys's purpose in asking two Somali sheiks whether a fatwa in Australia was permissible was "not to advance the doing of a terrorist act but rather it was to manage it . . . and, in essence, to prove that it was impermissible under Islam".
Tony Trood, for El Sayed, argued unsuccessfully that El Sayed was concerned with gaining permission for bank fraud to assist with the war in Somalia, or a money fatwa, rather than a violent one.
In a joint statement after the verdict, the AFP, Victoria Police, NSW Police Force, ASIO and NSW Crime Commission said Operation Neath was "a clear example of how state and federal police and the intelligence community are working collaboratively . . . to combat the threat of terrorism and ensure the safety and security of the Australian public".
Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland issued an identical statement. Justice Betty King remanded Fattal, Aweys and El Sayed in custody to appear in court for a mention hearing on January 24.
Federal police left the court grim faced. Defence lawyers were tight lipped.