Barbie bomb terrorist Tarek Khayat sentenced to die in Iraq
THE ringleader of the alleged Barbie doll bomb plot has been sentenced to death by an Iraqi court.
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THE accused ringleader of the alleged Barbie doll bomb plot has been sentenced to death by an Iraqi court.
Tarek Khayat, 46, was ordered to face death by hanging after admitting to being a financial officer for the terror group Islamic State in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Shortly after being told he would face the death penalty, Khayat told News Corp he was not involved in the alleged plot to bring down the Etihad Airways flight out of Sydney in July last year, and said claims of his involvement were “propaganda.’’
He was not charged in Iraq in relation to any connection to the alleged plot in Australia.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit and a brown scarf on his head, Khayat was missing his left foot and lower leg, blown off in the war in Syria.
Looking gaunt and pale, Khayat complained about pain in his injured leg, saying he had not received medication for it, just pain killers.
Questioned by a court guard, he said he may have suffered an infection.
He also complained that the Lebanese Embassy never visited him, and he had been unable to talk to his family in more than a year.
He told News Corp his mother was sister to Ahmed Merhi’s father, making the pair cousins.
Merhi is a former Granville High School student who travelled to Syria in 2015.
His relative and associate, Sydney man Ahmed Merhi, who appeared in court on Sunday, had also lost a leg fighting for Islamic State.
Khayat’s death penalty will be automatically appealed under Iraqi law, the Baghdad Central Criminal Court was told. He had no lawyer so the court appointed one for him.
He was sentenced to death by hanging.
Most executions in Iraq are carried out at the Nasariyah Central Prison in Iraq.
“I don’t know why they sentenced me like that,’’ Khayat told News Corp in the courtroom.
“It’s a very harsh sentence, especially that I didn’t work in Iraq, I was just an employee, a job.’’
A Lebanese citizen with a wife and six children, Khayat said he had Australian brothers, but he was not Australian.
He said he had fled the Lebanese city of Tripoli due to “troubles’’ and gone to Raqqa, Islamic State’s headquarters in Syria.
He admitted to the court that he had worked for Islamic State’s Khalid Bin Al-Waleed division in Raqqa, earning $US40 a month.
His brother Amer Khayat, a dual Australian-Lebanese national, is accused in Lebanon of attempting to become a suicide bomber and bring down the Etihad Airways flight with two bombs hidden in a meat mincer and a Barbie doll. He is also facing the death penalty in Beirut, although Lebanon has not carried out death penalty since 2004.
Lebanese and Australian officials have accused Tarek Khayat of orchestrating what would have been Australia’s worst ever terror attack, with the potential loss of up to 400 lives.
Tarek Khayat said he was arrested in Syria with about 21 other people.
News Corp has previously revealed he was captured with a group of Islamic State jihadis who were overrun as they tried to flee an advancing group of Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces soldiers.
They were trying to escape from the northeastern Syrian city of Al-Hasakah, a former Islamic State stronghold about halfway between Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.
He was then handed over by the Kurds to American forces who interrogated him and eventually handed him to the Iraqi military.
His family had given him up for dead, but it can be revealed he has been held incommunicado by the Americans at an unnamed base while they interrogated him about his role as a commander of on Islamic State unit responsible for attacks in the west.
Khayat was fighting under the nom de guerre Abu Abdullah al-Tripoli when he was captured, according to Lebanese officials.
The court in Baghdad heard he used the name Abu Abdullah Al-Shami.
Originally published as Barbie bomb terrorist Tarek Khayat sentenced to die in Iraq