Three Australian Muslims Saney Aweys, 27, Wissam Fattal, 34, and Nayef El Sayed, 26, found quilty of terror plot - court: : Three guilty of planning attack on Australian barracks

Three guilty of planning terror attack

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Three Australian Muslims Saney Aweys, 27, Wissam Fattal, 34, and Nayef El Sayed, 26, found quilty of terror plot - court: : Three guilty of planning attack on Australian barracks

MELBOURNE | Thu Dec 23, 2010 7:34am IST

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - A jury found three Australian men guilty on Thursday of planning an attack on a Sydney army base in 2009, in which they would stage a "shootout" and kill as many people as possible before they were killed or captured, a court official said.
The three Muslims believed Islam was under attack opposed Australia's military involvement in Afghanistan, the prosecutor told the Victorian Supreme Court during their trial in Melbourne.
Two other Muslim men were found not guilty.
Australia has around 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, based mainly at Tirin Kot in southern Uruzgan province, and is the largest non-NATO member of the international coalition fighting Taliban insurgents in the country.
Wissam Fattal, 34, Saney Aweys, 27, and Nayef El Sayed, 26, were found guilty of conspiring to prepare for or plan a terrorist act between February 1, 2009 and August 4, 2009.
As the jury left the court following the verdict, Fattal said: "Islam is truth religion. Thank you very much", Australian Associated Press reported from the courtroom.
Australia's biggest terror trial ended in February 2009, when Muslim cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika was jailed for 15 years for leading a cell that planned to bomb a 2005 football match in Melbourne. Altogether, 12 people were jailed over the plot.
Australia has not suffered a peacetime attack on home soil since a bombing outside a Sydney hotel during a Commonwealth meeting in 1978 that killed three people. But 95 Australians have been killed in bomb attacks in Indonesia since 2002.

Three guilty of planning attack on Australian barracks

ydney - Three Australians were found guilty Thursday of a plot to arm themselves with automatic weapons and kill as many soldiers as they could in a suicide attack on a Sydney Army barracks. Two others, also of Somali or Lebanese descent, were found not guilty after the three-month trial in Melbourne. Saney Aweys, 27, Wissam Fattal, 34, and Nayef El Sayed, 26, will be sentenced at a later date. Yacqub Khayre, 23, and Abdirahman Ahmed, 26, hugged each other and their fellow defendants when they were acquitted and set free. Police had alleged the five sought the blessing of Muslim leaders in Somalia for their plan to burst into the base and open fire. During a committal hearing earlier this year, the court heard the men had links to the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabaab. On that occasion, Fattal shouted out: 'You send troops to Iraq to kill innocent people. You call me a terrorist. I've never killed a person in my life.' He was admonished for a lack of respect to the court and for his refusal to stand when the charges were read out.

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