TAKING ON TERROR - Egypt deported accused Sydney teen over terror fears
The Australian
October 14, 2016
Paul Maley
National Security Editor
An alleged teenage extremist arrested on the streets of Sydney moments before he was to commit a grisly terrorist attack was deported by Egyptian security services less than a year ago after he travelled to the Sinai region to join a foreign terror group.
In a measure of how committed the 16-year-old was to the Islamist cause, The Australian has learnt that the boy, who cannot be named, was stopped and interrogated by Egyptian security services after he travelled to Egypt last December.
The boy’s co-accused also has a long pedigree in radical Islam, with police alleging the 16-year-old was taken to the 2012 Hyde Park protest when he was just 12 and given a sign that read: “Behead all those who insult the Prophet’’.
Both teenagers were charged yesterday with terrorist offences after they were arrested on Wednesday outside an Islamic prayer centre in Bankstown, in Sydney’s southwest, after police surveillance teams observed them purchasing bayonets. On them, police found knives, shaving gear and a single note handwritten in Arabic pledging allegiance to the caliphate of Islamic State.
According to police the pair were moments away from carrying out a gruesome stabbing attack, or perhaps a beheading, one of the hallmarks of Islamic State-inspired terrorism. The Australian has learned that, minutes before they were arrested, the pair washed, shaved and prayed at the Islamic centre.
The claims will be crucial to the police case against them, with prosecutors set to allege they constituted the final, ritualistic preparations of martyrdom.
In an interview with The Australian, the manager of the centre, who asked not to be named, said he found the two in the bathroom together minutes before police arrested them. “I asked: ‘Why were you in there?’ One said: ‘I was teaching my friend to do wudu (ablution before prayers)’,’’ the manager said.
Yesterday, the two were formally refused bail at the Parramatta Children’s Court after being charged with acts in preparation for a terrorist act and being members of Islamic State.
Court documents tendered by prosecutors quoted a phone conversation between one of the boys and his mother, intercepted a day after the murder last October of NSW police worker Curtis Cheng.
The boy is alleged to have told his mother: “When they come, I am going to do something to them that they have never seen before. I am going to do something bigger.”
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said yesterday that police could not at this stage say who was to be the target of the attack on Wednesday.
“What we do know, though, is that the actions, we will allege, were enough to say they were preparing to do an attack, although we don’t know specifically where that attack was going to take place,” Ms Burn said.
The court documents also allege that the second boy tried to travel to a terrorist-held region.
The Australian has learnt that area was the Sinai region of Egypt.
It is understood Egyptian authorities provided information on the teenager’s alleged activities to Australian intelligence services, which fed into an investigation of the boy, who was just 15 at the time of his travel.
It is not clear which organisation the boy tried to join, but the most prominent terror group in the Sinai region is Ansar Bait al Maqdis, a Salafist extremist group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State. Last year Islamic State claimed to have brought down a Russian passenger jet, killing all 224 passengers.
When the boy returned to Australia he was stopped and questioned by counter-terrorism officials. Extremist material, understood to be a copy of Dabiq, Islamic State’s online propaganda magazine, was found on his phone.
However, the information provided by the Egyptians could not be used as evidence in an Australian court, prompting officials to watch and investigate the boy.
Despite their age, both boys had a long history of radical behaviour and were well known to police. One was the stepson of a terrorist convicted earlier this year.
In 2014 the boy garnered the attention of police and the media after he refused to stand for the national anthem during an assembly at East Hills Boys High, his school.
Last night some head of some Islamic organisation gave excuses for the boys. Apparently we and the police are to blame for their behaviour.
Not their parents or peers or the people they associate with.
Get a load of the mother in the original article. You have to ask why do pollies keep making excuses for these people.
Gee I wonder what her children are taught?
