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Suspected terrorists may have stockpiled chemicals for bombs

The alleged terror plotters targeted in last week's raids in Australia had bomb-making instructions stored on a computer memory card, and were hoarding chemicals needed to make the same kind of explosives thought to have been detonated on London trains and buses in July.

According to brief details emerging of the prosecution case against eight men arrested in Sydney last Tuesday, they were members of an Islamic terror cell which held covert meetings and was stockpiling bomb-making chemicals.

After their dramatic pre-dawn arrests, senior lawmakers and police said intelligence agencies had foiled a potentially catastrophic terror attack on Australia. A further nine men were arrested Tuesday morning in the southern city of Melbourne and one more suspect was snatched from his car Thursday night on a suburban Sydney street.

All are in custody awaiting further court hearings.

The Sydney plotters, all of whom are charged with making explosives for a terror attack, are believed to have been manufacturing TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a highly unstable explosive made from commercially available chemicals such as acid, acetone and peroxide.

Police in England have refused to confirm reports that TATP was used by suicide bombers who killed 56 people July 7 on London's public transport system.

In Sydney's Central Local Court on Friday, prosecutor Wendy Abraham said police who raided Bosnian-born painter Mirsad Mulahalilovic's home on Tuesday found hydrochloric acid. They also accuse him of buying a length of PVC pipe and plastic caps.

However further details of the prosecution case against Mulahalilovic and the other Sydney suspects was withheld from media in a move that sparked criticism yesterday.

"It is a basic principle of our legal system that justice is public,"the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper wrote in an editorial.
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