Two men were charged in Australia yesterday after police thwarted an “imminent” terror attack, seizing an Islamic State (IS) flag, a machete and an Arabic-language video detailing the alleged plot during a raid in Sydney.
New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn said the planned attack was “consistent with the messaging coming out of IS,” while New South Wales Premier Mike Baird described it as “beyond disturbing.”
Asked whether the plot involved a beheading, Burn said police were as yet unsure, but that it had been due to happen on Tuesday in Sydney, and would likely have involved a knife.
The men, Omar al-Kutobi, 24, and Mohammad Kiad, 25, were arrested in a raid on a property in the city’s western suburbs by the Joint Terrorism Taskforce on Tuesday after a tip-off and charged with making preparations for a terrorist act.
Reportedly devout Muslims, they were refused bail with the case adjourned until today due to security issues.
In September last year, Australian police shot dead a “known terror suspect” armed with two knives who stabbed two officers in Melbourne, a day after the IS group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), called for Muslims to indiscriminately kill Australians.
In another unprovoked attack in May 2013, two Britons of Nigerian descent hacked to death 25-year-old soldier Lee Rigby near an army barracks in the southeast of London.
Australian Attorney-General George Brandis told parliament the video seized allegedly showed “one suspect kneeling in front of an ISIL flag, with the knife and machete, making a politically motivated statement, threatening to undertake violent acts with those weapons.”
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the video was in Arabic and that “regrettably there are people out there, some living in our midsts, who would do us harm.”
Baird said a potentially “catastrophic” incident had been avoided.
“It was beyond disturbing, what was planned,” he told reporters. “Certainly, something catastrophic was avoided yesterday and for that we should be very thankful.”
Australia in September last year raised its terror threat level and carried out extensive raids in Sydney and Brisbane to disrupt an alleged plot by IS supporters to abduct and randomly behead a member of the public.
In December last year, Sydney was rocked by a siege at a cafe by Iranian-born Man Haron Monis, a self-styled cleric with a history of extremist views.
He took 17 people hostage for about 16 hours, with the stand-off only ending after Monis shot dead cafe manager Tori Johnson, prompting police to storm the building and kill him. Another hostage was killed by a stray police bullet.
Abbott yesterday warned people to prepare for more IS-influenced plots.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS