Jihad hunters foil bomb plotter

A TERRORIST mastermind’s plan to groom an online recruit to blow up Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market has been foiled.

The evil jihadi urged a group posing as a willing Melbourne extremist to plant a “sequence of bombs” at the Queen Victoria Market when crowds were at their peak to kill and maim dozens of “dirty unbelievers’’.

In a series of encrypted texts and voice files sent over five months, the overseas plotter named Sajed gave specific instructions on how to create a car bomb, to be driven to a crowded corner of the market and detonated.

But Sajed — who claimed to be part of a network of overseas terrorists — was actually revealing his plans to a family of amateur jihadi hunters, who had drawn him in by posing as an extremist living in Melbourne.

Sajed’s correspondence has been handed to the Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which has reassured the public there is no imminent threat of an attack at the market.

The UK-based family of jihadi hunters have helped expose a series of Islamic Stateinspired plots in Britain.

In both cases, information was passed on to authorities and the group was hailed in the media for exposing the plans.

“Our teams regularly receive information from various sources and carefully assess that information based on validity and risk,” a Victoria Police spokesman said.

“These matters were assessed earlier this year in accordance with that process and it was determined that they pose no threat in Australia.’’

The shadowy Sajed is believed to live overseas — possibly in Pakistan or Bangladesh — and has a network of extremists helping him.