3 charged with planning mass murder
CANBERRA: Three men inspired by the Islamic State group were charged yesterday with planning a mass-casualty attack in Australia’s second-largest city, police said.
The Australian citizens of Turkish descent — Hanifi Halis, 21, and brothers Samed Eriklioglu, 26, and Ertunc Eriklioglu, 30 — were arrested in pre-dawn raids on their Melbourne homes, police said. All had their passports cancelled this year on suspicion that they intended to fight with extremists overseas.
The trio communicated with encrypted messages, which made it difficult for police to determine when and where the attack was to take place, Victoria Police Chief
Commissioner Graham Ashton said.
“Whilst a specific location was not finalised, there was a view toward a crowded place,” where they could kill more victims, he said.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton reacted by calling on parliament to pass by next month draft cybersecurity laws that would force global technology companies such as Facebook and Google to help police unscramble encrypted messages sent by criminals. Rights advocates have raised privacy concerns.
“The problem that we have now is that the messages being swapped between terror cells and people involved in terrorist
activity as well as other significant criminals, they are doing it online through these messaging apps and the police don’t have the ability to get across that technology. That is the significant issue,” Mr Dutton told reporters.
The three men were refused bail when they appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday charged with planning a terrorist attack. They each could face a life prison sentence if convicted.
Prosecutors told the court the police investigation that began in March involved intercepts of 17,000 phone calls and 10,500 text messages plus 7,800 hours of other covert recordings.
Police allege the men were trying to acquire 0.22-calibre semi-automatic rifles. Semi-automatic rifles are virtually banned from public ownership under Australia’s tough gun laws designed to reduce masscasualty shootings.
There’s no link between the latest plot and other attacks and plots in Melbourne. Police have described a fatal stabbing in the city’s central business district on Nov 9 as an Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack. The attacker was shot dead by police after he killed a 74-year-old man and injured two other people, and he had planned to set off an explosion in his burning pickup vehicle loaded with gas canisters.