Australian police foiled ‘catastrophic’ terror raid

TWO Islamic terror cells were rushing to become the first to stage a major “jihad” terror bombing in Australia, a prosecutor said yesterday.

This follows the arrest by armed police of 17 suspects in a string of coordinated pre-dawn raids in two cities.

“The police forces of this country might just have prevented a catastrophic act of terrorism ... either in Melbourne or in Sydney,” said New South Wales Police Minister Carl Scully.

One of the suspects, Abdulla Merhi, wanted to carry out attacks to avenge the war in Iraq, police said in a Melbourne court.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard was a strong supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq and still has troops in the country.

Norm Hazzard, who heads the state’s counterterror police unit, said the suspects were followers of the al-Qaida chief.

“There’s no doubt that this group followed that same philosophy,” he said.

About 500 armed police arrested nine men in Melbourne and eight in Sydney, including one man injured in a gun fight with police.

Police said they expected more arrests in coming weeks. Police raided another Sydney home last night, but there were no immediate reports of arrests.

The raids came less than a week after Mr Howard strengthened counter-terror laws after saying intelligence had warned of a possible imminent terror attack.

He went on television to say the risk was not over despite yesterday’s arrests.

Police said the raids appeared to have come before the plotters agreed a target.

Both cells were followers of 45-year-old firebrand cleric Abu Bakr, an Australian who was born in Algeria, a prosecutor said.

The suspects stockpiled the same kind of chemicals used in the July 7 bombings that killed 57 people on buses and trains in London, prosecutor Richard Maidment told Melbourne Magistrates Court.

“Each of the members of the group are committed to the cause of violent jihad,” he added, saying they underwent military-style training at a rural camp northeast of Melbourne.

Bakr was charged with leading the terror group while the other Melbourne suspects were charged with membership of a terror group. Seven, including Bakr, were ordered detained to appear on January 31.

In a sign the arrests could spark a backlash among Australia’s nearly 300,000 Muslims, angry supporters of the suspects clashed violently with cameramen in Melbourne and Sydney.