Suspected Sydney bomb plot ringleader and IS terrorist captured in Iraq
Sydney: An Islamic State (IS) commander suspected of hatching a plan to blow up a flight from Sydney last year and an Australian IS fighter allegedly connected to the country’s most notorious terror cell have been captured in Iraq.
Senior Australian officials have told the
ABC that Islamic State commander Tarek Khayat and his Australian relative, Ahmed Merhi, were detained in Iraq earlier this year, but their arrests have been shrouded in secrecy because of diplomatic sensitivities surrounding the cases.
The two men kept in close contact with some of Australia’s most notorious terrorism suspects from their positions in Syria, but appear to have shifted to Iraq when IS was routed from its territory in both countries last year.
Mr Khayat, a Lebanese citizen, is allegedly responsible for one of the world’s most serious airline bomb plots, which came so close to carnage in the skies above Australia last year that it left the global intelligence community shaken and Australian counter-terrorism authorities in damage control.
The Australian Federal Police say Mr Khayat directed his Sydney-based brothers, Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat, to blow up an Etihad flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi on July 15 last year with 400 passengers and crew on board. The plot went undetected by Australian authorities and was only foiled by chance by an Etihad check-in officer at Sydney Airport, according to a court dossier prepared by the Lebanese military prosecutor on the case and obtained by the