Australian jihadist thought to be dead alleged to have made threatening calls over property

EXCLUSIVE: ISLAMIC State fighter Khaled Sharrouf, originally believed to have been killed in a drone strike in Syria, is still alive and making threatening calls to people in Sydney over ­attempts by the NSW Crime Commission to seize his house.

Khaled Sharrouf, his children and his wife Tara with her mother, Karen Nettleton.

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ISLAMIC State fighter Khaled Sharrouf is still alive and making threatening calls to people in Sydney over ­attempts by the NSW Crime Commission to seize his house.

Law enforcement officials have uncovered ­numerous contacts from the terrorist, who had ­reportedly been killed in Syria, including a death threat made last month by­­­ ­­­­­­a person claiming to be Sharrouf to a person in Sydney.

The threat related to ongoing legal proceedings led by the NSW Crime Commission, which is attempting to seize a house bought for Sharrouf before he left Australia.

Australian fugitive Khaled Sharrouf (back of truck) in Syria with other ISIS extremists.

Authorities believe the house in western Sydney was purchased by murdered standover man Joe ­Antoun and others linked to him.

While the house is not in Sharrouf’s name, the commission is suing its legal owner, a relative of Antoun’s, using Criminal Assets ­Recovery legislation. They want to seize the house because of its links to Sharrouf.

A law enforcement official said Sharrouf has no paper link to the house but remains attached to the property and doesn’t want to lose it.

“Sharrouf thinks it’s his,” the ­official said, adding there had been several suspected contacts from him suggesting he wasn’t dead. “He wants to foster an image he’s dead.”

A second law enforcement official said that since the initial reports of Sharrouf’s death last year there had been information coming through suggesting he was still alive, though without a public presence in Syria it was difficult for Australian authorities to verify the intelligence.

Antoun was gunned down on the doorstep of his Strathfield home in December 2013 over an unrelated matter.

Tara Nettleton, right, with her mother Karen. A lawyer for the family said Sharrouf’s fate was “unverifiable”.

The revelations come as questions continue to be posed over the fate of Sharrouf’s children, all of whom are Australian passport holders, and whether they can be brought back to Australia after ­reports emerged last week that Sharrouf’s wife Tara Nettleton, who took the children to Syria, died from complications with appendicitis.

She had been the main point of contact for negotiating the children’s return to Australia, a third law enforcement source said.

The official said federal authorities fell out of touch with Ms Nettleton around September last year and believe she may have died around that time.

Her mother Karen was last week photographed leaving her home with a tattoo on her arm suggesting the date of death was September 11.

Khaled Sharrouf’s children: Zaynab (pink), Abdullah (middle), Hoda (purple) and Humzeh (front centre).

Part of the reason Tara died, the official said, was because she wasn’t given priority treatment at a hospital over injured ISIS men.

Robert Van Aalst, a family friend and lawyer to the Nettleton family, declined to be interviewed but said the family was told in January that Sharrouf was dead.

He declined to say who provided the information.

Another lawyer acting for the Nettleton family, Charles Waterstreet, said he had been told the same but didn’t necessarily believe it.

“Khaled’s fate is unverifiable,” Mr Waterstreet said yesterday.

“The family were told he’s dead but knowing how unreliable everything is, whether he’s dead or not I wouldn’t know, but nothing would surprise me.”

International outrage in August 2014: British newspaper The Sun shows the son of Khaled Sharrouf holding a severed head in Syria.

Mr Waterstreet is assisting Karen Nettleton in appealing to ­foreign governments and non-government organisations to lead a mission to repatriate the Sharrouf children.

He said the children — Sharrouf has two sons and three daughters: Zaynab, 14, now a mother of a baby herself, Hoda, 13, Abdullah, 11, Zarqawi, 10, and Humzeh, 5 — were currently living alone in a house somewhere in the country and had no access to food or cash.

The girls were also unable to walk around and seek assistance without a male minder and about $2000 had been wired to them but hadn’t yet been claimed.

He said the children had held off telling Karen about Tara’s death because they didn’t want to upset her.

Despite the illegalities involved in wiring money — it is an offence to send money to terrorist organisations or their sympathisers — the authorities had been sympathetic to the family’s attempts, Mr Waterstreet said.

Khaled Sharrouf poses with an AK-47 in front of a sports car from an undisclosed location within Iraq. Picture: Twitter

While there were no firm ­attempts afoot to bring the children home, he said efforts to locate and extract the children were ongoing.

In the past Sharrouf has boasted about his deceptive tactics on social media, including his ability to slip through customs and fly “first class” out of the country.

References have also been made to feigning mental illness during his court proceedings between 2007 and 2009 on charges of conspiring to commit an act of terrorism.

Two psychologists ruled he was unfit to stand trial and one claimed Sharrouf was “unlikely to become involved in a further ­offence”.

On sentencing, the judge took into account Sharrouf’s “drug-induced psychosis” and “chronic schizophrenia”. He was released a month after his sentence was handed down because of time already served.