Three Melbourne men involved in a terrorist plot to attack the
Holsworthy Army Barracks in Sydney should have been sentenced to life
imprisonment, a court has heard today.
The Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has
appealed against the maximum 18-year jail terms handed down to the men,
saying the sentences were inadequate for the crime.The men –
Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, 37, and Nayef El Sayed, 29, who were born in
Lebanon, and Saney Edow Aweys, 30, who was born in Somalia – have lodged
counter appeals against their convictions and sentences.
The
three men were part of an Islamic terrorist cell that planned to enter
the army barracks armed with military weapons and shoot as many people
as possible before they were killed or ran out of ammunition.
The
men, who had all met at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne's north, were
arrested in August 2009 after undercover police infiltrated the group.
They
were jailed in December 2011 for 18 years with a non-parole period of
13 years and six months after a Supreme Court jury found them guilty of
conspiring to plan a terrorist attack in Australia. Two other men were
acquitted of involvement in the plot.
The three men appeared in
the Court of Appeal on Monday flanked by four security guards. Two
protective services officers stood guard outside the courtroom.
When
Justices Peter Buchanan, Geoffrey Nettle and Pamela Tate entered the
courtroom, Fattal refused to stand for the judges, saying he would stand
for no man, only God.
Aweys' defence team told the court the
sentencing judge, Justice Betty King, had failed to properly instruct
the jury about an "extraordinarily complex case" and the evidence did
not support a conviction.
In her sentencing remarks in December
2011, Justice Betty King said the background to the conspiracy appeared
to lie, to a degree, in the support the three men had for al-Shabaab, a
radical and extreme Muslim group based in Somalia, involved in the civil
war raging in Somalia on and off for decades.
Justice King said the men were all practising and devout Muslims.
"There
is of course, as in all religions, great divergence in the views held
by those within the religious Muslim world. It is an unfortunate, but
widely known fact, that some Muslims, who hold extremist views of not
only their religion, but their obligation under their religion, to
martyrdom, have engaged worldwide in terrorism," the judge said.
Justice King said Fattal was the most dogmatic and outspoken, in terms of religious fervour, of the three.
"All
of you believe in the principle of martyrdom. All of you believe it is
your obligation to oppose and deal with those you describe as infidels,
being persons who are not of the Muslim faith or those of the Muslim
faith who do not observe the faith in what you perceive as an
appropriate manner, or adhere to the strong and fundamentalist views
that you all hold.
"The fact that Australia welcomed all of you
and nurtured you and your families is something that should cause you
all to hang your heads in shame, that this was the way you planned to
show your thanks."
Fattal had been a champion kickboxer from Lebanon who married his wife in 2004 after meeting her at a barbecue in Melbourne.
His
life changed when he travelled back to Lebanon a year later and became
infuriated by a Danish cartoon that many Muslims believed was an
insulting, offensive depiction of the prophet Mohammed.
Fattal
joined a violent protest against the cartoon which caused extensive
damage outside the Danish embassy in Beirut and he was arrested and
jailed for three months.
When he returned to Australia, Fattal lived with his wife and newborn baby for another six months before deciding to leave.
The
judge said Fattal soon became more religious and more fervent and
fundamental in his religious views when living a monastic life in a
rented room near the Preston mosque and began plotting to kill as many
Australians as possible to advance the cause of Islam.
Justice
King noted that Aweys' statements towards the people and the government
in Australia were becoming more heated and more anti-Australian in
early 2009.
Aweys, who came to Australia in 1998 after spending
six years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia and is married with four
children, claimed "everyone was happy" with the Black Saturday bushfires
on February 7 "as a punishment for this country".
The judge said
El Sayed, who came to Australia in 2007 and is married with one child,
had portrayed himself at the Preston mosque as a charitable, devout,
good Muslim man when he was secretly involved in the terrorist plot.
The appeal hearing continues.