Australia Foils Suicide Attack on Army Base, Arrests 4 Men, Including Lebanese
Australia arrested four people of Somali or Lebanese descent, in anti-terror raids that foiled a plot for commando-style suicide attacks on at least one army base, senior officers said Tuesday.
Some 400 officers from state and national security services took part in 19 pre-dawn raids on properties in Melbourne, Australia”s second largest city, police said. Four men, all Australian citizens of Somali or Lebanese descent and aged between 22 and 26, were arrested, and several others were being questioned Tuesday, police said.
Australian Federal Police Acting Commissioner Tony Negus said the raids followed a seven-month surveillance operation of a group of people with alleged ties to al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida-linked Somali extremist organization that has been fighting to overthrow Somalia”s transitional government.
"Police will allege that the men were planning to carry out a suicide terrorist attack on a defense establishment within Australia involving an armed assault with automatic weapons," Negus told reporters. "Details of the planning indicated the alleged offenders were prepared to inflict a sustained attack on military personnel until they themselves were killed."
Holsworthy Barracks on the outskirts of Sydney was one of the group”s potential targets, and surveillance had been carried out on others in Victoria state, he said.
Negus said the investigation also found that some Australian citizens had traveled to Somalia "to participate in hostilities" there, and that the group was seeking a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, approving their plans for the Australian attack. Negus did not say whose approval was being sought.
"This operation has disrupted an alleged terrorist attack that could have claimed many lives," he said.
Police said a 25-year-old man from Melbourne”s Glenroy area had been formally charged with conspiring to prepare a terrorist act, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said other charges were likely to follow.
"As the Australian government has said consistently, there is an enduring threat from terrorism at home here in Australia as well as overseas," Rudd told reporters in the northern city of Cairns. "This is a sober reminder that the threat of terrorism to Australia continues."
Police sealed off several houses in Melbourne after the raids and were conducting intensive searches. Forensic officers in protective suits collected samples and searched at least one car parked in a driveway, while uniformed officers interviewed neighbors.