Bomb ‘to explode after 20 minutes’
Forced to put hand in broken glass
AN 18-year-old high school student was left with severe cuts to her hand when her boyfriend forced her to place her hand on a broken picture frame, a court was told.
The man, who was ten years older than the teenager, forced the girl to put her hand in the glass during an argument which started because he refused to let her go shopping with her sister.
The Gold Coast man pleaded guilty in the Southport District Court yesterday to one count of assault occasioning bodily harm.
He was also in breach of a domestic violence order at the time despite the teen staying at his home voluntarily.
Judge Katherine sentenced him years probation.
No conviction was recorded. McGinness to two BOMBS which police say were intended for a plane departing Sydney were allegedly set to go off as the passenger jet passed west of the Blue Mountains.
The Gold Coast Bulletin can reveal one of three brothers accused of trying to plant bombs on an Etihad Airways flight last year allegedly confessed to Lebanese police the two devices were designed to detonate 20 minutes after takeoff. He has since retracted his confession and says he is innocent.
In the now-retracted confession, Amer Khayat, 40, who is in jail in Lebanon, allegedly told police the devices, hidden in a meat-mincer and a Barbie doll, had been fitted with selftimers designed to detonate 20 minutes after takeoff.
Police have not revealed whether the target was flight EY451 or EY455, but both follow a similar path.
Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said this would have placed the plane between Oberon and Bathurst, about 200km west of Sydney.
Lebanese police who interrogated Amer Khayat, who was alleged to be the designated suicide bomber, claim he told them that the bombs never made it on to the plane because Etihad said his hand luggage was too heavy.
And in an exclusive interview in the grim Central Prison at Roumieh, near Beirut, Khayat said “Australia is my country’’ and pleaded to be allowed to return home.
“Tell the people of Australia I am innocent,’’ he said. “I am not a terrorist. I am innocent and the police in Australia know I am innocent … I want to go home.’’
Khayat, who has daughters aged 11 and 15 with his ex-wife in Sydney, has been in jail since August, when Lebanese police arrested him in relation to the alleged plot to smuggle the two bombs on to the plane on July 15.
Two of his brothers, Khaled Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, are in custody in Sydney accused of two counts of plotting a terrorist act relating to the same alleged incident, and a second alleged plot to build a chemical weapon.
They have pleaded not guilty and will stand trial next year.