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More charged with terrorism offences in Australia
Wed Aug 5, 2009 2:33am EDT
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By James Grubel
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian police charged four more men on Wednesday with planning to attack an army base and shoot soldiers as the government considered whether to ban a Somalia militant group linked to the plot.
During a brief court hearing in Melbourne on Wednesday, one of those charged refused to stand before the court and then shouted at the presiding magistrate.
"You call me a terrorist? I have never killed a person in my life, said Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, 33, before he was led to a jail cell. "Your army kills innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel takes Palestinian land by force," he said.
Australia has gradually tightened anti-terrorism laws since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, but analysts say the country remains a target because of its contribution to the Iraq war and its more than 1,500 troops in Afghanistan.
A total of five men have been charged with terrorism offences. All have been remanded in jail to reappear in the Melbourne Magistrate's Court in October 26.
The five, all Australian citizens with Somali and Lebanese backgrounds, were arrested in a series of police raids on Tuesday across Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, after a seven-month investigation.
Police said they had links to the al Qaeda-linked group, al Shabaab, in Somalia and had planned a commando-style attack to kill soldiers on a Sydney army base.
Prosecutors told the Melbourne Magistrate's Court on Tuesday they had evidence some of the men had taken part in training in Somalia and at least one had engaged in frontline fighting in Somalia.
INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT DRIVE
The arrests coincide with a surge in Western concern about radicalization of some Western converts to Islam. On July 29 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder warned of increased "radicalization" of Americans going abroad and then returning home with the "aim of doing harm to the American people."
He was speaking two days after seven people were arrested in North Carolina for allegedly plotting attacks overseas. Holder also expressed concerns about a group of young Somali men leaving the Minneapolis area to join al Shabaab.
Al Shabaab has been conducting an international recruitment campaign backed by al Qaeda's propaganda network for fighters to join its push to take power in Somalia and impose strict Islamic rule.
Although al Shabaab plays up its link to the transnational network of Osama bin laden, analysts say attacking Western targets overseas is not its primary goal, which is overwhelmingly domestic.
But one consequence of its use of ethnic Somalis from the millions-strong diaspora community may be that veterans head home with the funds or skills to attack Western targets of their own volition, Western counter-terrorism officials say.
"The chances are extremely remote that this was Shabaab saying 'Go off and strike Australia'," said Will Hartley, Editor of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center, a security consultancy and information provider. Continued...
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