Free Republic

A bizarre row broke out between a senior Chinese state media journalist and an Australian cameraman covering Scott Morrison's media conference. Tensions flared in the prime minister's courtyard when Bai Xu, the chief of Xinhua New's Canberra bureau, became angry that a SBS cameraman was filming her. The Australian cameraman turned the lens on the Chinese reporter after witnesses claimed a photographer Ms Xu was with was taking photos of other journalists on Friday. The unusual scene became even more heated when Ms Xu put her hand over But as the incident drew the eye of other Australian journalists and...

THE arrest of a Sydney student on terrorism training charges has intensified the police focus on four Sydney men allegedly linked to a Pakistan-based terror cell that ASIO suspects plotted to bomb Australian military bases last year. Fourth-year medical student Izhar Ul-Haque has spent his second night in the nation's highest-security prison, the Supermax at Goulburn, after becoming only the second person charged in Australia with terrorism offences since the 1978 Hilton bombing. NSW Premier Bob Carr confirmed yesterday that his Government had been asked to make preparations to house more than one suspect in its prison system. "We were...

On the night of Wednesday, August 27, two men dressed as computer technicians and carrying tool bags entered the cargo processing and intelligence centre at Sydney International Airport. The men, described as being of Pakistani-Indian-Arabic appearance, took a lift to the third floor of the Charles Ulm building in Link Road, next to the customs handling depot and the Qantas Jet Base. They presented themselves to the security desk as technicians sent by Electronic Data Systems, the outsourced customs computer services provider which regularly sends people to work on computers after normal office hours. After supplying false names and signatures,...

ASIO has placed under surveillance active members and sympathisers of al-Qa'ida, including some Australian citizens who trained in Afghanistan with the terrorist group. ASIO has identified three classes of al-Qa'ida activists in Australia. These are Australian citizens, mostly of Middle East origin, who trained with al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan. There are also a small number of Muslim organisations with intimate links to al-Qa'ida. And there are individuals with long-standing links to al-Qa'ida's South-East Asian networks. These people have connections with the Jemaah Islamiah radical Muslim group based in Indonesia. Members of Jemaah Islamiah were involved in a plot to attack the...