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Hearing begins in Australia terror conspiracy case

A group of Australian Muslim men charged in an alleged terrorist conspiracy had decided to launch an attack and started buying bomb-making chemicals and downloading instructions from the Internet in order to carry it out, a court heard yesterday.

Prosecutor Wendy Abrahams began outlining evidence against nine suspects charged in the largest alleged terrorist plot on Australian soil to reach a court hearing.

In the Penrith Local Court, the suspects were formally indicted on one charge each of conspiring between June 2004 and November 2005 in preparation for a terrorist act.

None of the suspects, who each face a maximum penalty of life in prison, entered a plea. The purpose of the hearing, which was expected to last for weeks, is to allow Magistrate Michael Price to decide if there is enough evidence to send the men to a jury trial.

Abrahams told the court the suspects had obtained large amounts of freely available chemicals that could be used in bomb-making, including hydrochloric and citric acids, glycerin, acetone and brake fluid.

They also had detonators and laboratory equipment such as beakers and rubber tubing to mix and store chemicals. In addition, they had documents on computers and elsewhere that gave bomb-making instructions, and that "could properly be characterized as extremist in nature," Abrahams said.

"In a nutshell ... the defendants entered into an agreement ... to carry out a terrorist attack," Abrahams said.

She said the men believed they had a religious obligation to defend Islam from attack, and that "the primary tool was violent jihad."

When authorities searched the house of one suspect, Mohammed Ali Elomar, on June 27, 2005, they found a computer memory stick containing a 60-page document in Arabic that included instructions on how to make bombs from unrestricted materials, and how to hide explosives near restaurants and government buildings, Abrahams said.

The instructions included how to make TATP, the explosive used in the deadly 2005 London subway bombings that can be made from bleach, drain cleaner and acetone paint thinner.

Also found in the search was a compact disc with a 1,064-page, Arabic document labeled "Security and Intelligence" that included chapters titles "Sabotage," "Counterespionage" and "Surveillance.

At the house of another suspect, Khaled Sharrouf, authorities found a document for training jihadi recruits hidden inside a children's book.

Mazen Touma, Abdul Rakib Hasan, Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho, Mirsad Mulahalilovic, Omar Baladjam and Mohammed Jamal are the other suspects.

The men were arrested in a series of pre-dawn raids in late 2005.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the national spy agency, has requested that parts of the proceedings be closed to the public for national security reasons.
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