Secret service raids on two southern Australian cities in the past week were politically motivated and aimed at boosting support for the government's new counterterrorism laws, a Muslim community leader said yesterday.
Police and the spy agency -- Australian Security Intelligence Organization, or ASIO -- used search warrants to raid homes in Sydney and Melbourne on Monday and last week yesterday.
Attorney General Philip Ruddock has refused to reveal the purposes of the raids but said Monday "issues they are addressing are the ones of utmost seriousness."
No one had been arrested, he said.
The government and security agencies have given no details of the houses raided, or identified any possible terror suspects, but media have widely reported that they targeted radical Muslims.
Newspapers quoting unnamed sources have reported the raids were aimed at disrupting a plot by Islamic extremists to attack an Australian landmark such as the Sydney Opera House or Harbor Bridge or in Melbourne, the Australian Stock Exchange or a railway station.
But Melbourne community leader Sheik Mohammed Omran said yesterday the raids were aimed at generating public support for new counterterrorism laws that have been condemned by civil libertarians.
"It looks to me it is politically motivated exercise," the sheik told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
"In Australia as a whole, everyone -- not just the Muslims -- every just person and every person who believes in justice doesn't like what is happening," he added.
The sheik said he knew one of the men whose home was raided and described him as "of good character."
He also denied a media report that an extremist was using an inner-Melbourne mosque to recruit followers.
"There's no mosques whatsoever in Melbourne or anywhere in Australia built for such a thing," he said.
Muslim groups have complained that Muslims have been targeted by new laws that allow people suspected of having information about terrorism to be detained despite them not being suspects in any crime.
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