Chief fears terror numbers
State funeral for Sisto
VICTORIA’S Chief Commissioner, Graham Ashton, says there are hundreds of radicalised potential terrorists who are not being fully monitored but who have the potential to carry out something like last Friday’s Bourke St atrocity.
Mr Ashton was speaking yesterday as detectives from the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team were trying to piece together Hassan Khalif Shire Ali’s movements in the weeks before his deadly CBD attack, which saw him burn his vehicle and stab three pedestrians, killing one.
Thousands more police officers would be needed to physically and electronically watch every terror suspect, Mr Ashton said. He said the stretched agencies only had the manpower to monitor the highest risk extremists of the more than 400 potential terrorists on the watch list.
He also revealed: HE would back moves by the Federal Government to introduce laws to make it easier to deport potential terrorists. FOREIGN fighters returning after joining Islamic State overseas were a looming terrorist threat. POLICE have established links between Somalian-born Shire Ali, 30, and other radicalised Islamic extremists he could not detail due to a court suppression order.
Mr Ashton rejected claims by Shire Ali’s family that the Bourke St incident was not terror related but was a cry for help from a mentally ill man.
“It was clearly a terrorist attack, we’ve been treating it as a terrorist attack since Friday night,” he said.
He said police hoped to know more about Shire Ali’s motivation, what he planned to do and whether or not he was influenced by others, either in Australia or overseas, once they had extracted the contents of his seized electronic devices.
“It’s early days in the interrogation of those devices so it might be a number of days until we understand whether there was anything being preplanned or, indeed, whether there was any incitement from overseas,” he said.
Mr Ashton said Shire Ali had a crude incendiary device with him.
“The CCTV cameras first picked him up on the corner of Exhibition and Flinders, heading north, travelling pretty slowly in the traffic.” he said.
“He went up Exhibition, turned left eft in to o Bourke, ke, again the he traffic was solid. He went along Bourke over Russell and dh has j just t sort of steered across to what was a gap and got it up on the footpath and stopped there.
“I think he was looking for a place he could ignite the car to get some pedestrians.” BELOVED Melbourne restaurateur Sisto Malaspina will be farewelled at a state funeral next week after being killed in a terror attack. The Malaspina family agreed to the state funeral yesterday, less than a day after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews Andrew made the offer. “Sisto Malaspina was a V Victorian icon, known and love loved by us all,” Mr Andrews tw tweeted. “I spo spoke to his fam family again thi this morning, and they have acc accepted my offer of a state funera funeral next week, with more mo details to come.” Ideas are being be considered for a lasting tribute to Mr Malaspina, 74, including renaming the laneway next to Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar, which he coowned. Pellegrini’s is due to reopen today.