update on somali arrests in OZ terror raids....

[hanqadh]

WTF IS WRONG with Somali's???....these guys went one step further than the american somali's.

Somali extremists on a 'fatwa order' from GodFont Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Cameron Stewart and Milanda Rout | August 05, 2009
Article from: The Australian
POLICE feared that a group of Melbourne Islamic extremists might have recently obtained a fatwa, or religious blessing, to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia, raising the possibility that it could be carried out within weeks.

The Australian understands police were concerned that a Somali Australian who returned from the war-torn country only three weeks ago might have secretly obtained a fatwa from a sheik in Somalia, although police were unable to confirm this through their surveillance.

Faced with the possibility that a suicide attack on an Australian Army base might be imminent, more than 400 federal and state police swooped on the terror suspects early yesterday, arresting four men and executing search warrants on 19 houses.

Nayef El Sayed, 24, was charged with conspiring with Saney Edow Aweys, Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, Yacqub Khayre and Abdirahman Ahmed to prepare for a terrorist attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney's southwest.

As of last night, the remaining four men had not been charged.

As revealed exclusively in The Australian yesterday, police believe the Melbourne group planned to launch a suicide assault on an Australian Army base using automatic weapons.

It is alleged they planned to kill as many people as possible before they were themselves killed in what would have been the worst act of terrorism in Australia.

Kevin Rudd said the arrests of the men were a grim reminder that terrorism remained a real threat to Australians.

"There is an enduring threat from terrorism at home here in Australia as well as overseas," the Prime Minister said. "I want to reassure all Australians that our law enforcement agencies and our intelligence agencies are working hard to combat terrorism."

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said news of the plot showed that the fight against terrorism was "far from won".

Commonwealth prosecutor Nick Robinson told Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday the accused were preparing a suicide attack on the Holsworthy army base.

"To become self-proclaimed martyrs?" magistrate Peter Reardon asked.

"Yes," Mr Robinson replied.

The prosecutor said they had a "voluminous" amount of evidence about the conspiracy, including telephone intercept records and surveillance footage.

The intercepts picked up conversations between some of the men about going to Somalia "to be engaged in the conflict" but they had problems getting into that country.

These discussions then turned to "violent action to take place in Australia".

Mr Sayed appeared only briefly in court for the filing hearing, handcuffed and flanked between two police officers. He refused to stand up for the judge, with his lawyer Anthony Brand saying, "He believes that he shouldn't stand for any man except God".

Mr Robinson said text messages uncovered by investigators included one sent from Mr Fattal on March 24 that read: "Can you give me the address of the Australian A and the name of the train station."

He told the court another text message was sent from a Preston pay phone on March 27 giving directions to the Holsworthy army base.

Mr Robinson said CCTV footage revealed Mr Fattal had "attended" the Holsworthy base on March 28, before he sent another message saying: "I strolled around ... it is easy to enter."

The court was told during the hearing for Mr Khayre that investigators believe he had travelled to Somalia to take part in a military training camp.

"He left Australia on the 13th of April and returned on the 14th of July," AFP officer Brendan Castles told the court.

Mr Ahmed was also involved in seeking religious authorisation for the terrorist attack on Australian soil, the court heard.

"We believe that Ahmed was seeking a fatwa and that fatwa would have assisted the group in committing the act," AFP officer Niranjan Jirasinha said.

Mr Robinson said there were several men seeking the fatwa from sheiks and clerics "out of the state and (in) countries overseas".

The Australian understands the suspects believed a fatwa would lend credibility to their cause and ensure they became martyrs.

Two members of the group are believed to have travelled to Somalia to train with the militant extremist group Al-Shabaab, which the US believes has links with al-Qa'ida. But when other members of the group could not travel to Somalia, they turned their attention to carrying out an act of terror in Australia.

[hanqadh]

Young man was prime target for militant recruitersFont Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Sally Neighbour | August 05, 2009
Article from: The Australian
A DILAPIDATED warehouse turned makeshift mosque in North Melbourne has emerged as a key hub in a sprawling militant Islamist network, whose home base in the Horn of Africa has become a major nucleus of the global terrorist movement.

The Eight Blacks prayer centre, named after a former Aboriginal meeting place on the same site, occupies an abandoned goods shed in Boundary Road, opposite a block of Housing Commission flats which house a large slice of Melbourne's burgeoning community of Somali refugees.

For most who frequent it, the rundown prayer hall is a source of spiritual comfort and support. For a few, it became a magnet of radical ideology, which drew them to the jihadist cause.

Among the congregation three years ago was a young Somali refugee in his mid-20s, Ahmed Ali, who had migrated to Australia with his family in 1994 after his father, a commander in the Somali army, was killed in the country's long-running civil war.

Ali would have been a prime target for militant recruiters. Studies worldwide have shown that second and third generation members of migrant diasporas, uprooted from their homelands and native cultures, are ripe for recruitment.

After several years of intensive Islamic study sessions, Ali became an imam at the prayer hall, which, in 2006, played host to a delegation of militants who travelled from Somalia to raise money and support among the local community. Some in that community sounded the alarm.

Muslim scholar and community leader Herse Hilole, who is now posted with an Islamic university in Kuala Lumpur, warned that militants were targeting young Somali refugees as potential recruits.

His warning was seemingly borne out later that year, when Ahmed Ali travelled to his homeland to join the Islamist insurgency. In January 2007 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported that Ali had been killed, apparently while fighting.

However his mother, Khadra Nimale, told The Australian that relatives believed her son was alive and had joined al-Qa'ida, which they said had recruited him as an interpreter because of his fluent English.

Ali was following a well-worn path. From the early 1990s, Somalia was targeted by al-Qa'ida as a new front and staging post for its jihad against the West. At the time, Osama bin Laden was based in neighbouring Sudan, after being expelled from his homeland, Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden and his strategists saw the isolated and lawless East African nation of Somalia as an ideal location for a new base, according to a report by the Combating Terrorism Centre at the US Military Academy at West Point.

In 1993 bin Laden sent his senior military commander Mohammed Atef to Somalia to set up the organisation's newest base. His first task was to establish three new training camps, with the support of a local militant group.

Al-Qa'ida was welcomed by Somalia's own Islamic militant groups, which formed an umbrella organisation known as the Council of Islamic Courts. The most hardline of these was a jihadist militia known as al-Shabaab ("the young men").

It is this group to which the five men arrested in yesterday's raids in Melbourne are allegedly affiliated, Australian Federal Police Acting Chief Commissioner Tony Negus said yesterday.

Al-Qa'ida's alliance with the Somali militants transformed East Africa into a stronghold and major theatre of operations for the jihadist movement.

Bin Laden has boasted that al-Qa'ida trained the Islamist fighters who took on US forces in the battle of Mogadishu in 1993, made famous in the movie Blackhawk Down. The defeat prompted the US withdrawal from Somalia, cited by bin Laden as one of al-Qa'ida's early victories.

Somalia was also a launchpad for al-Qa'ida's first major attack on a Western target, the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, which killed 223.

Those bombings became a model for a rash of subsequent al-Qa'ida inspired plots, including a plan to stage a repeat attack in Australia.

In 2000 one of the principals of the African embassy bombings, Khalid bin Attash, attempted to recruit Australian Muslim convert Jack Thomas to carry out a similar attack in Australia. Thomas, who claimed he was appalled by the suggestion, was later acquitted on charges of providing support to al-Qa'ida.

The overthrow of Somalia's Islamic Courts government by US-backed forces from Christian Ethiopia in 2006 only fuelled the Islamists' rage. Restoring the Islamist government became a cause celebre for would-be jihadists from around the world, who saw Somalia as the latest example of an ongoing Christian crusade to conquer Muslim lands.

Since then would-be holy warriors have flocked from around the world to fight with the Islamist insurgents.

While Somali community leaders in Australia say that between 10 and 20 Somali refugees have returned to their homeland to join the fight, Australian authorities have estimated the figure may be double that. The FBI has reported that about 20 former Somali refugees have made the same journey from the US.

In November 2006 a group of Australians and other foreigners were arrested in Yemen and accused of attempting to traffic weapons to Islamist fighters in Somalia. They included the two sons of Australian woman, Rabiah Hutchinson, who is branded by Australian security services as the "matriarch" of militant Islam in Australia. Ms Hutchinson's sons were eventually released without charge and Yemeni authorities said there was no evidence against them.

Back in North Melbourne, Victoria Police and their counterparts in the AFP and ASIO have kept the Eight Blacks prayer hall under close surveillance for the past three years. Last year, The Australian reported that the mosque was being used to distribute mobile phones linked to overseas network to propagate hardline ideology, prompting new warnings about young Somalis being targeted for jihadist recruitment.

Sally Neighbour is a senior reporter with The Australian and the ABC's Four Corners

[STOP!]

DNT BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY!


IT MAY BE A STICK UP....OR THEY REFUSED TO WORK FOR THEM SO THEY GONNA GET MOVE 2!

ONLY ALLAH KNWS THE FULL STORY!

[Diyeeshaha_Tolka]

walaahi somali youths r used by everyone,,here in uk jamaican drug dealers using somali kids to sell their drugs,, elsewhere arabs are using somali kids to do thier dirty jobs..

[The Nomad]

walaahi somali youths r used by everyone,,here in uk jamaican drug dealers using somaliLAND kids to sell their drugs,, elsewhere arabs are using somali kids to do thier dirty jobs..

Fixed.

I find it disgusting you'd compare the stupid little niggers in the UK with the noble Mujahideen in Somalia.

[STOP!]

walaahi somali youths r used by everyone,,here in uk jamaican drug dealers using somaliLAND kids to sell their drugs,, elsewhere arabs are using somali kids to do thier dirty jobs..

Fixed.

I find it disgusting you'd compare the stupid little niggers in the UK with the noble Mujahideen in Somalia.

SHUT UP!

[The Nomad]

walaahi somali youths r used by everyone,,here in uk jamaican drug dealers using somaliLAND kids to sell their drugs,, elsewhere arabs are using somali kids to do thier dirty jobs..

Fixed.

I find it disgusting you'd compare the stupid little niggers in the UK with the noble Mujahideen in Somalia.

SHUT UP!

Am I wrong, sport?

The UK drug dealers are Isaaq and therefore not Somali. Would it be fair to blame a Qatari for a crime a Saudi committed? Same logic.