Members of the group described Australia as too decadent for Muslims and dismissed Australians as ”modified English” in conversations outlined by the prosecutor Nick Robinson, SC.
One welcomed the Black Saturday bushfires in which 177 died as divine retribution for the jailing of the leader of a Melbourne Islamist terrorist cell days before the fires. The leader was jailed for 15 years. Five other cell members were sentenced to lesser jail terms.
”Straight away, after the conviction [sic], one day later [sic] fires broke out in the country and all were happy … we say Allah bring the fitna [trouble] … Allah bring the calamity,” Saney Edow Aweys was recorded as relating to a contact in Somalia.
Mr Aweys, 27, and four others, Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, 34, Nayef El Sayed, 26, Yacqub Khayre, 23, and Abdirahman Mohamud Ahmed, 26, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to prepare for, or plan a terrorist act.
Opening the prosecution case, Mr Robinson said it was the group’s plan to enter Holsworthy armed with high-powered weapons and to kill as many people as possible, within 10 or 20 minutes, until they exhausted their ammunition, were overwhelmed or were killed themselves. He said the conspiracy occurred between February 1 and August 4 last year.
Conversations between Mr Fattal and his mother in Lebanon revealed him asking her to pray for his martyrdom. ”Supplicate for me to be killed at the hands of the False Messenger. That’s the best one on earth, mother,” Mr Fattal asked. To an overseas contact, Mr Fattal said: ”It’s better for you to stay in the Arabic countries … forget here, it’s decadence.”
Mr Robinson said Mr Fattal told an undercover police officer that he swore to Allah that if he could find a way to ”kill the army”, he would do it.
Mr Robinson said the group settled on a local target when it became clear several of them would be unable to travel overseas. Mr Aweys’s function was to use his contacts in Somalia to seek a fatwa, or permission, for their proposed attack by phone. Mr Khayre travelled to Somalia to seek the fatwa in person, while Mr El Sayed also did so by phone after being introduced to sheiks by Mr Khayre. Mr El Sayed sent Khayre overseas, Mr Robinson said, and reported to Mr Fattal on their emissary’s progress. Mr Ahmed canvassed for clerics who might support their plans.
The prosecution case relies on conversations in English, Arabic and Somali recorded from phones and listening devices.
