"No one ever picks Italy"
Posted on 06/02/2004 11:49:00 AM PDT by knighthawk
A FORMER Qantas baggage handler charged yesterday with terrorism offences allegedly paid for the trip to Lebanon of an Australian associate caught travelling on a false passport and accused of plotting terrorist acts abroad.
Bilal Khazal, named by the CIA as an al-Qa'ida operative, was also accused of compiling an assassination hit list, headed by US President George W. Bush, and urging Muslims to kill "infidels" in Western countries, including Australia.
Khazal, 34, a well-known firebrand Muslim, was arrested yesterday morning at his Sydney home by Australian Federal Police agents and charged with collecting and making documents likely to facilitate terrorist attacks -- an offence carrying a maximum 15-year jail term. He was later granted bail and is due to be released today.
The documents, which he is alleged to have posted on the internet last September, urged Muslims to attack the interests of countries including the US, Britain, Israel, France and Australia.
As part of his bail application, Sydney's Central Local Court heard that Lebanese authorities had over the past two days told their Australian counterparts a man under arrest there, Saleh Jamal, had claimed his journey was resourced by Khazal.
The court was also told Khazal had access to a man who was able to falsify travel documents.
The charges faced by Mr Jamal, who jumped bail in Sydney in March, include being a member of a terrorist group, being in possession of weapons and planning terror attacks inside and outside Lebanon. He was arrested at Beirut airport last week with another Australian man, Haitham Melham.
Mr Jamal is wanted in NSW over the 1998 shoot-up of the Lakemba police station in Sydney and fled the country while on bail.
Khazal's alleged links to Mr Jamal do not form the basis of any current police action. Instead, the charge laid against him yesterday centred on a belief that he had espoused extremist militant theologies that called for people, in countries including Australia, who did not share the ideology, to be killed.
The book he allegedly compiled was titled Provisions in the Rules of Jihad -- Short Wise Rules and Organisational Instructions Which is the Concern of Every Fighter and Mujahid Against the Infidels. It is allegedly a combination of Khazal's own ideologies and radical teachings by several Islamic scholars and clerics.
Investigators claim he used the internet to send the manuscript to a person in the United Arab Emirates in September 2003. It was returned with indexing instructions, then posted on the extremist Sheikh Al-Maqdesse website.
Among a hard drive and hard copies seized on May 6 from Khazal's southwest Sydney home was a section titled "Targets that should be assassinated".
It included Western leaders, ministers and military officials, and Australia was listed at No 5.
The AFP statement of facts said investigators were still trying to determine whether the published words were Khazal's, or had been re-published from the works of others.
Khazal's lawyer, Chris Murphy, told the court the charge stemmed from a "cut and paste" case. He said the material the document contained was no more serious than "millions" of websites detailing how to make bombs.
He said Khazal had been interviewed by authorities between 60 and 70 times since arriving in Australia from Lebanon in 1994 but had never been charged with an offence.
Khazal, who was a Qantas baggage handler for 12 years, came to the attention of the CIA around the time of the Olympics. He was last year sentenced in absentia in Lebanon to 10 years in prison for raising funds for a local terror group.
Golly diversity is great! /sarcasm
Bail? Are they kidding?
Ping
Australia celebrates diversity....
Why France?
I'm glad someone else thinks releasing a terrorist on bail is questionable.
"No one ever picks Italy"
Must be the brains of the operation....
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