Terrorist raids are reported this morning in Melbourne, involving allegations of planned suicide attacks on army installations.
Yes, allegedly followers of that faith.
UPDATE
Hundreds of police are said to be involved.
UPDATE 2
Cameron Stewart:
Federal and state police, armed with search warrants, swooped on members of the suspected terror cell this morning, as they seek to arrest Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese background in what will be the second-largest counter-terrorism operation in the nation’s history.
The men are expected to be charged with a range of terrorism-related offences.
Authorities believe the group is at an advanced stage of preparing to storm an Australian Army base, using automatic weapons, as punishment for Australia’s military involvement in Muslim countries. It is understood the men plan to kill as many soldiers as possible before they are themselves killed.
Members of the group have been observed carrying out surveillance…
Search warrants for at least 19 properties across Melbourne have been prepared to allow authorities to obtain more evidence against the group, which is believed to number about 18, with a smaller, hardcore element. The suspects include Australians of Somali and Lebanese decent, most of whom are labourers employed in Melbourne’s construction industry, or taxi drivers.
It is understood that several members of the group also wanted to travel to Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab, but when travel became difficult, they turned their attention to carrying out a terrorist attack in Australia.
UPDATE 3
More on al-Shabaab:
In the summer of 2007, a 28-year-old father of three from Houston, Texas, shocked his country when he became the first American ever to be convicted of receiving military training at a terrorist camp in Somalia. Daniel Maldonado, an offbeat, outspoken young man who sported tattoos and dreadlocks, committed himself to wage jihad outside the United States and went to Somalia to receive training… Maldonado’s training in jihad came from Shabaab al Mujahideen, a group the State Department on Feb. 29, 2008, designated as a highly dangerous foreign terrorist organization.
Shabaab al Mujahideen, which espouses radical Islamic rule and has close ties to Al Qaeda, is best known for operating training camps for people seeking a more extreme form of Jihad. It also has been forging relations with Somali pirates who have recently been intercepting and holding for ransom several international shipping vessels.
UPDATE 4
Indeed, the senior leadership of Shabaab al-Mujahideen—including Shaykh Mukhtar Abu az-Zubair, Abu Mansour Mukhtar Robow, and others—have all clearly and publicly endorsed the idea of foreign fighters “migrating” to Somalia in order to seek specialized terrorist training and battlefield experience fighting the “crusaders.” ...
Support for the recruitment and training of foreign fighters has reached all the way up through the ranks of Shabaab, to the emir of the organization, Shaykh Mukhtar Abu az-Zubair. In an audio recording released on June 1, 2008, Shaykh Mukhtar boasted of how “the Muslim people of Somalia have merged with the most elite fighters from the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement… Allah willing, international jihadi units will be launched from the Land of the Two Migrations [the Horn of Africa] to haunt and destroy the infidels and their interests around the world… We are an integral part of the vanguard of the global jihad.”
UPDATE 5
From December:
Dozens of young Somali men in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have disappeared in recent months, causing community members and U.S. intelligence officials to fear that they are joining jihadist groups in Somalia… A senior American intelligence source confirms that Somalis have vanished in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, adding that some people from the Caribbean also appear to have left for Somalia. And not all of the people bound for training or jihad in Somalia have a Somali background, the source said.
UPDATE 6
Victoria Police:
Several people are in custody and a number are assisting with inquiries as a result of a joint counter-terrorism operation in Melbourne this morning involving the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Victoria Police, NSW Police, the NSW Crime Commission and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
Police executed 19 search warrants across Melbourne at around 4.30 this morning. Warrants were executed on homes in Glenroy, Carlton, Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Westmeadows, Preston, Epping and Colac.
Today’s operation involved approximately 400 officers from the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and NSW Police.
Police believe members of a Melbourne-based group have been undertaking planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia and allegedly involved in hostilities in Somalia.
UPDATE 7
From December 2007:
FEDERAL police are investigating local Muslim leaders over suspicions they are encouraging dozens of young men to return to their homeland to join Islamic jihadis against the Ethiopian-backed Somali forces…
It is understood that the investigation has widened following revelations in The Australian that a Somali from Melbourne, Ahmed Ali, who travelled to Somalia in December to fight alongside the Islamic Courts movement, was believed to be working as an interpreter with al-Qa’ida. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported in January that Mr Ali had been killed in the fighting…
Somali community figures said Mr Ali was one of 30 or 40 Australian Somalis who have returned to fight since last December…
The Australian revealed in October that Mr Ali had been radicalised by Melbourne-based hardline clerics.
His mother accused Mohammed Omran - the head of the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jammah association who describes Osama bin Laden as a “good man” - of turning Mr Ali into a hardliner… Mr Ali was working as an imam at Eight Black, a prayer hall mainly attended by Somalis in north Melbourne, before he travelled overseas last year.
UPDATE 8
From 2007:
YOUNG Somali refugees in Melbourne are being seduced by Muslim extremists, a Somali community leader has warned. Herse Hilole, a Sydney community leader and Islamic scholar, fears the recruits could be used in terrorism attacks in Australia.
He said some Somalis were being influenced by radical Lebanese from a hardline Wahhabi group…
He told The Age extremists from Somalia visited last year to gather money and support and that one of their most important allies was the Somali mosque in North Melbourne. Leaders at the mosque declined to speak to The Age but worshippers say the mosque, in Racecourse Road, is a community centre…
Other Melbourne Somali leaders denied that Australian Somalis were engaged in jihad, in Somalia or Australia… Somali Council of Australia president Salaad Ali Ibrahim said the claims were misleading. Mr Ibrahim said most Australian Somalis — more than 10,000 — lived in Melbourne. There was no danger from them, he said…
Dr Hilole told The Age that Muslim extremists fell into two groups in Australia: those promoting political Islam, such as Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, and those who supported jihad, such as Salafis (ultra-conservatives), who controlled some mosques and schools. He said Somalis who supported the Islamic Courts movement, and there were many, did not want to integrate with Australian society.
UPDATE 9
Kuwait Times, last month:
Somalia’s hardline Islamist rebels beheaded seven people yesterday for being ‘Christians’ and ‘spies’ in the latest imposition of strict sharia, Islamic law, by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab group, witnesses said.
UPDATE 10
From last month:
The mother and a friend of an Australian man held hostage in Somalia for almost a year have confronted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to express their frustration over his plight. Bundaberg photojournalist Nigel Brennan was kidnapped in Somalia along with a Canadian journalist 11 months ago.
UPDATE 11
A reminder, too, how you were once misled:
CHRISTINE Nixon yesterday confirmed it. She did mislead us on crime rates of African refugees. It’s actually four times worse than she’d claimed. ..
Just before last year’s federal election, (the then Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police) embarrassed the Howard government’s immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, by contradicting his warnings that the crime rates among Somali and Sudanese refugees were high.
Not so, said Nixon: “Those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics.”
She was silent on the crime rate among Somalis, but repeated: “The young Sudanese who actually come into custody or dealt with us, only really make up about 1 per cent of the people we deal with . . . (W)hat we’re actually seeing is that they’re not, in a sense, represented more than the proportion of them in the population.”
Source: Andrew Bolt
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