Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Terrorist who shot policeman avoiding arrest in Jihad nuclear plant bomb plot played cop killer on Australian TV soap opera
Terrorist who shot policeman avoiding arrest in Jihad nuclear plant bomb plot played cop killer on Australian TV soap opera
Jihad plotters told "to inflict maximum damage - and made to " get their mother's permission first"
November 14, 2005
Muslim terrorist who shot policeman avoiding arrest in nuclear plant bomb plot played cop killer on Australian TV soap opera
Booking agent 'shocked' at clients terrorist arrest
November 14, 2005
MIM: More proof that Muslims are living in a parallel universe. One time soap actor who played a cop killer shoots and wounds a policeman avoiding arrest in nuclear bomb plot. His (ex) agent, claims to be "pretty shocked" at the way art has now imitated life.
In a another surrealistic twist recorded conversations between the plot mastermind and the conspirators the mastermind cleric told them to "If you want to die for Jihad have maximum damage" and added that they would have to ask their mother's permission .http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article327099.ece
"...Police claim that, during a meeting with three of the men last February, Mr Benbrika told them: "If we want to die for jihad, we have to have maximum damage. Damage to their buildings, everything. ."Damage their lives to show them" The conversation was recorded during police surveillance. Mr Benbrika told them they had to seek their parents' permission to participate in jihad, saying: "If your mother says no jihad, then no jihad." " Two days later, police allege, one of the suspects, Mazen Touma, duly approached his mother. Her response is not documented.Terrorist suspect had part in Australian soap opera
By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 10/11/2005)
A suspected terrorist who shot and wounded an Australian policeman is a former actor who appeared in the television soap opera Home and Away.
Omar Baladjam, 28, was charged with attempted murder the day after 17 alleged militants were arrested in Melbourne and Sydney.
More than 400 police officers were deployed in the operation which it is claimed foiled at least one serious attack. As Baladjam was approached outside a suburban mosque, he allegedly fired several shots, wounding one officer in the hand before being shot in the neck. At a special bedside court hearing in Liverpool Hospital, Sydney, he was charged with 13 offences, including planning a terrorist act and the attempted murder of two police officers. He is due to appear in court tomorrow.
Baladjam played a graffiti artist in an episode of Home and Away in 1998. A year earlier, he appeared in a crime drama as a ram raider who killed two policemen. He then became a spray painter.
His former theatrical agent, Di Kounnas, told the Sydney Morning Herald she was "pretty shocked" at Baladjam's alleged involvement in the plot, which is believed to have targeted landmarks in Sydney and Melbourne.
Police said more arrests were likely as they sifted through evidence seized in Tuesday's dawn raids, including computers, firearms and documents.
Some of those arrested came from Lebanon, Algeria, and Bangladesh. But at least six were born in Australia.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/09/waust09.xml
Terror cells 'plotted devastating twin attack in Australia'
By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 09/11/2005)
Chilling details of an alleged plot by Islamist radicals to carry out a "catastrophic" terrorist attack in Australia emerged yesterday.
Police arrested 17 suspects during dawn raids involving 450 heavily armed policemen backed by helicopters. Authorities alleged that the suspects were members of a terrorist cell committed to "violent jihad" on Australian soil.
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Among those detained was a trainee electrician allegedly impatient to carry out a suicide bombing in retaliation for Canberra's support for the war in Iraq.
Police refused to reveal the group's alleged targets other than to rule out the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March, which will be opened by the Queen.
Terrorism suspects have previously been caught carrying out surveillance on the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge and the Melbourne stock exchange.
Eight men were arrested in Sydney and nine in Melbourne in the biggest counter-terrorism operation in Australia's history, the culmination of 16 months of surveillance.
One of the Sydney suspects was shot in the neck and critically injured after he fired at police who ordered him to stop as he walked towards a mosque.
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"The police forces of this country might just have prevented a catastrophic act of terrorism," the New South Wales police minister, Carl Scully, said.
Ken Moroney, the head of the state's police force, said: "I'm satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack."
The nine members of the alleged Melbourne terror cell appeared in court, where prosecutors said they had carried out military training in the bush and had stockpiled chemicals capable of making bombs.
Police disclosed that they had 240 hours of secretly taped recordings in which the suspects allegedly discussed jihad and martyrdom.
The group's alleged leader, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 45, a Muslim preacher, was charged with directing the activities of a terrorist organisation and being a member of a terrorist organisation.
The remaining eight, aged between 21 and 31, were charged with being members of a terrorist organisation.
The eight Sydney suspects were charged with preparing to manufacture explosives in preparation for a terrorist act.
The arrested men had been plotting to "kill innocent women and children," Richard Maidment, QC, prosecuting, told Melbourne magistrates' court.
He said intense rivalry between the two groups meant the Melbourne cell were keen to outdo their counterparts in Sydney by fast-tracking plans for an attack.
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Plot to blow up Sydney nuclear plant
By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 15/11/2005)
Islamic terrorists were planning to inflict "maximum damage" with a devastating attack on Australia's only nuclear reactor, police claimed yesterday.
Three of the 18 men arrested last week in the country's biggest counter-terrorism operation were caught acting suspiciously near the Lucas Heights research reactor, 20 miles from central Sydney, last December, police alleged in a document submitted in court.
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When questioned separately, the men gave contradictory accounts of their activities, it was said. Police later found that a lock on a gate to a reservoir in the grounds of the reactor had been freshly cut.
During searches of the suspects' homes over the past four months, police found batteries, stopwatches, 165 detonators and hundreds of litres of chemicals similar to those used in the July 7 bombings in London.
They also found firearms, ammunition, machetes, Samurai swords, a computer memory stick containing instructions in Arabic on how to make explosives and videos entitled Sheikh Osama's Training Course and Are You Ready to Die?
The police claimed that the suspected militants spent time earlier this year at remote camps in New South Wales.
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"This training is consistent with the modus operandi of terrorists prior to attacks," the 20-page document said. Police said the spiritual leader of the two groups arrested in Sydney and Melbourne, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, urged his followers to unleash "maximum damage" as part of a holy war. The Islamic preacher, based in Melbourne, was described in court as "a Muslim extremist".
Lawyers for the men have said there was no specific evidence of a planned attack and claimed the charges brought against the group were politically motivated.
The 18 men are charged with conspiring to do an act in preparation for a terrorist act or being members of a terrorist organisation.
In Brisbane, Australia's third largest city, authorities ordered all public buses and trains to unload their passengers for 30 minutes during yesterday evening's rush hour after three anonymous telephone threats, which later appeared to have been a hoax.
 10 November 2005: Terrorist suspect had part in Australian soap opera |
| 9 November 2005: Terror cells 'plotted devastating twin attack in Australia' |
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