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RADICAL Muslim cleric Abdul Benbrika has escaped trial over his plot to bomb Australia and he could walk free from jail in only six years. One of his co-accused Melbourne terrorists already has been released and the other two are eligible to be freed in November... The decision to abandon the case was made despite terror cell members associated with Benbrika ordering or buying all the chemicals and equipment needed to make a "Mother of Satan" bomb capable of killing hundreds. Police planted many listening devices in the homes of various cell members and secretly recorded 16,418 hours of Benbrika...

AN alleged home-grown terror group in Melbourne's suburbs who sought inspiration from al-Qa'ida planned to blow up football stadiums and train stations and talked of killing 1000 people, the Victorian Supreme Court was told yesterday. The court also heard that the group's leader and self-proclaimed Islamic cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika believed such a terrorist attack on Australian soil, in the pursuit of Islamic jihad, was justified because Australia was "a land at war". (snip) Videos found in the possession of some of the accused included sniper shootings of US soldiers and speeches by bin Laden.

TERRORISM suspects hoarded computer how-to guides on making explosives and articles about al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden and jihad, a court heard yesterday. Aimen Joud, 21, also had graphic video footage of the execution and decapitation of a man said to have come from Chechnya in 1998, Melbourne Magistrates' Court was told. Federal police found the manuals on terrorism and militant Islam when searching the homes of Mr Joud and Shane Kent, 29, in September 2004. Sen-Constable Paul Madden told the court one handbook, known as the Vortex Cookbook, was later shown to the group's alleged spiritual leader, Abdul Nacer Benbrika....

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend. How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up. As NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney put it, the arrest yesterday of 17 Muslim men disrupted "the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". He said explosive material had already been collected. Yet only last week, Prime Minister John Howard was pilloried by many for having warned of an...

Plot to kill PM, court told Katie Lapthorne17dec05 TERROR suspects talked about killing John Howard and his family as payback for the deaths of innocent Muslims, a court heard yesterday. The conversation between accused would-be suicide bomber Abdullah Merhi and his spiritual leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika was secretly recorded in September last year. The pair allegedly discussed taking an eye for an eye. The Melbourne Magistrates' Court heard Mr Merhi, 20, told the leader of the alleged Melbourne terrorist cell: "If, for example, John Howard kills innocent Muslim family . . . do we have to kill him and his...

TWO men accused of being members of a terrorist organisation allegedly discussed whether Prime Minister John Howard and his family should be killed as payback for the deaths of innocent Muslims, a Melbourne court has been told. The allegation was made at the second day of a bail hearing for Abdulla Merhi, 20, of Fawkner, and Hany Taha, 31, of Hadfield, at the Melbourne Magistrates' Court. They are among 10 men charged with being members of a terrorist organisation last month. Eight of the men also have been charged with financing a terrorist organisation. The alleged leader of the group,...

CANBERRA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - An Australian Muslim cleric who said Osama bin Laden was a "great man" has been named by police as the spiritual leader of a group of 16 men charged on Tuesday with planning a terrorist attack in Australia. Abdul Nacer Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, has long been monitored by Australian authorities and grabbed headlines in August after he praised bin Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. He is a self-styled leader of a fundamentalist Islamic group of young followers in the suburbs of Australia's second-biggest city, Melbourne....

HE preaches that Osama bin Laden is a great man and he does not oppose local Muslims travelling to Iraq to fight Australian troops. But 15 years ago, self-styled Melbourne Islamic radical Nacer Benbrika told a very different story to Australian authorities when pleading to stay in this country. He told them it was "his love of the Australian lifestyle" that made him want to live here. What is more, Benbrika, who now openly supports violent jihad overseas, told authorities in 1990 that he feared for his life if he were sent back to the "dangers" of his native Algeria....