On the morning of 18 September 2014, police in Australia carried out the biggest counter-terrorism operation in the nation's history, with over 800 heavily armed officers targeting households in the cities of Sydney and Brisbane. It came days after the Australian government raised the terror threat from medium to high due to concerns about Australian citizens returning to the country after fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). [1] Following the raids, two people were charged, one with terrorism offences and the other for possession of an unauthorised firearm. [2] One of the two arrestees became one of only two men on remand at the highest security prison in Australia, as he is considered an "AA" security risk. [3]
Authorities raided 25 homes in Bass Hill, Revesby, Regents Park and elsewhere. [4] The raids were triggered after the interception of one phone call. [5] Computers, documents and a firearm were collected during the raid. [6] Fifteen people were detained and eleven people were subsequently charged with terrorism offences. [7]
Prime Minister Tony Abbott stated that a senior Australian member of ISIL had called for "demonstration killings" including a public beheading. Omarjan Azari, 22, was charged with conspiring to commit these acts. [8] Azari was charged with "attempting to make funds available to a terrorist organization.". [9] Azari is held in Australia's maximum security prison, where he became the first person on remand ever sent there, [10] and there are Federal Court orders "control orders" that prohibit certain people from communicating with him. [11]
Prior to his Supreme Court trial, Azari in December 2015, pled guilty to trying to provide funds to Islamic State. [12] [13] The Supreme Court trial of Azari that had convened in late April 2017 [14] was aborted by a Justice, as some of the accused in the separate 2015 Parramata shooting also figure in the Azari case, and the judge considered the jury may be prejudiced. A new trial for Azari will begin in November 2017.
The cancellation of passports of those wanting to fight overseas for extremists causes as well as resentment towards Australia's role in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been raised as possible motivations behind the alleged terrorist planning. [6] After the raids, Imraan Husain, an Imam from the Gold Coast, warned that sending troops to the Middle East could marginalise local Muslim youth, especially those who follow jihadists on social media. [15]
Between 200 and 400 [16] Muslims in Sydney protested the raids at Lakemba railway station the night after the morning raids. The protesters, organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, [16] cited "police brutality" and "political hysteria". [8] Wassim Doureihi, a prominent member of the group, said "Let me say clearly even if a single bomb went off even if a thousand bombs went off in this country all it will prove is that Muslims are angry." [16]
Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, or simply Abu Hamza, is an Egyptian cleric who was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, England, where he preached Islamic fundamentalist views.
Abdul Nacer Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, is a convicted criminal, who served a custodial sentence of fifteen years, with a non-parole period of twelve years, for intentionally being the leader and a member of a terrorist organisation. Benbrika was one of 17 men arrested in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne in November 2005, charged with being members of a terrorist organisation and of planning terrorist attacks on targets within Australia. Benbrika is alleged to be the spiritual leader of the group. All 17 men pleaded not guilty. On 15 September 2008 Benbrika was found guilty as charged and subsequently sentenced.
Faheem Khalid Lodhi is a convicted Pakistani–Australian criminal and architect, currently serving an Australian custodial sentence of twenty years, with a non-parole period of fifteen years for conspiring to commit a terrorist act or acts. Lodhi was the first convicted Australian terrorist under amendments made to the Commonwealth's Criminal Code Act 1995, in May 2003.
The 2006 Cheetham Hill terrorism arrests was an anti-terrorism operation in the United Kingdom, in which Habib Ahmed, a taxi driver, was arrested by six policemen at his home in Cheetham Hill, Manchester on 23 August 2006 on suspicion of his involvement in a plan to attack on an individual.
Terrorism in Australia deals with terrorist acts in Australia as well as steps taken by the Australian government to counter the threat of terrorism. In 2004 the Australian government has identified transnational terrorism as also a threat to Australia and to Australian citizens overseas. Australia has experienced acts of modern terrorism since the 1960s, while the federal parliament, since the 1970s, has enacted legislation seeking to target terrorism.
Babar Ahmad is a British Muslim of Pakistani descent who spent eight years in prison without trial in the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2012 fighting extradition to the United States. The US accused him of providing material support to terrorism via a website that he set up in the UK in 1996 to publish stories about the conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya, but which in 2000–2001 allowed two articles to be posted on the site offering support to the then Taliban government in Afghanistan. The US accepted that the website was operated from the UK but claimed jurisdiction because one of the servers hosting the website was located in the US. He fought a public eight-year legal battle, from prison, to be tried in Britain but the British Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was "insufficient evidence to prosecute" him.
The Holsworthy Barracks terror plot was an Islamist terrorist plot uncovered in August 2009 targeting Holsworthy Barracks—an Australian Army training area located in the outer south-western Sydney suburb of Holsworthy—with automatic weapons. The perpetrators planned to infiltrate the base and shoot as many army personnel and others as possible until they themselves were killed or captured; but they were arrested before they could carry out their plan.
The 2005 Sydney terrorism plot concerned a group of five men arrested in 2005 on charges of planning an act of terrorism targeting Sydney, Australia's most populous city and the capital of New South Wales. The group was found guilty on 16 October 2009 and were sentenced on 15 February 2010 for terms up to 28 years.
Zaky Mallah is an Australian who became the first to be charged with terror offenses under Australia's anti-terrorism act after he made a video which allegedly contained a threat to carry out a suicide attack on federal government offices in Sydney in 2003. He was acquitted of two terrorism charges in 2005, but pleaded guilty to a third charge of threatening violence against Commonwealth officials.
"The Beatles" was the nickname for an Islamic State terrorist group composed of four British militants. The group was named by their hostages after the English rock group The Beatles, who referred to the members as "John", "Paul", "George", and "Ringo".
On 23 September 2014, 18-year-old Abdul Numan Haider attacked two counter-terrorism police officers with a knife outside the Victoria Police Endeavour Hills police station located in Endeavour Hills, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He was then shot dead.
The Lindt Café siege was a terrorist attack that occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt Chocolate Café in the APA Building in Martin Place, Sydney, Australia.
Mohammed Junaid Thorne is an Australian Islamic preacher of Aboriginal heritage from Perth, Western Australia. Thorne is noted for his controversial views on Islamic militant groups including Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Thorne is a member of the Australian branch of Millatu Ibrahim, a Salafi organisation banned in Germany. In August 2015 Thorne was sentenced to between four and eight months jail for travelling on an aircraft under a false name, and using fake ID to obtain his ticket.
On 2 October 2015, Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, a 15-year-old boy, shot and killed Curtis Cheng, an unarmed police civilian finance worker, outside the New South Wales Police Force headquarters in Parramatta, Sydney, Australia. Jabar was subsequently shot and killed by special constables who were protecting the headquarters. As of 27 April 2016, four other men have been charged in relation to the shooting, among whom Raban Alou was convicted of terrorism offences in March 2018.
In late December 2015, authorities in several countries announced the discovery of attack plots, organized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), targeting New Year's celebrations. Police in North America and Europe were on high alert in December 2015 because of a series of terrorist attacks and attack plots, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, and because of information picked up by security agencies indicating that militants might plan to attack public New Year's Eve celebrations.
On 5 June 2017, Yacqub Khayre, a 29-year-old Somali-born Australian, murdered a receptionist and held a sex worker hostage at the Buckingham International Serviced Apartments, located in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. In a subsequent shoot-out with a police tactical unit, Khayre was killed and three police officers were wounded. Police consider the siege an act of terrorism.
On 15 September 2017, at around 08:20 BST, an explosion occurred on a District line train at Parsons Green Underground station, in London, England. Thirty people were treated in hospital or an urgent care centre, mostly for burn injuries, by a botched, crude "bucket bomb" with a timer containing the explosive chemical TATP. Police arrested the main suspect, 18-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, in a departure area of the Port of Dover the next day, and subsequently raided several addresses, including the foster home of an elderly couple in Sunbury-on-Thames where Hassan lived following his arrival in the United Kingdom two years earlier claiming to be an asylum seeker.
Aine Lesley Davis, also known as Jihadi Paul, is a British convert to Islam who was convicted in a Turkish court of being a member of a terrorist group while serving as a fighter for the ISIL.
El Shafee Elsheikh, known as Jihadi Ringo, is a Sudanese Wahhabi terrorist who took part in atrocities of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as one of the four so-called Jihadi Beatles. He was found guilty of eight charges of hostage taking and murder by an American court in 2022 and later sentenced to eight life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Azari has been classified AA – the state's highest security rating – and is one of just two people confined inside the Supermax facility while on remand.
Mr Azari became the first person to be held on remand in Supermax.
The control order named 18 alleged Sydney extremists with whom he is not to associate including those accused of offences in connection with the murder of NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng outside Parramatta police headquarters in October and Omarjan Azari, 23, who is accused of plotting to murder a random member of the public in the name of Islamic State.
Sydney man spoke to Islamic State about carrying out attack in Australia, court hears
Omarjan Azari, 22, changes not guilty plea to guilty following evidence from former associate who became a prosecution witness
Talal Alameddine, 24, Milad Atai, 21, and Mustafa Dirani, 23, have been subject to a committal hearing over their alleged role in the murder of Mr Cheng, and featured in stories published by a range of Sydney media including the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph. Some of those men would also feature in the Azari trial, she said.
