Amer Khayat: Acquitted terror dad’s new Aussie life
Amer Khayat, the man whose brothers allegedly tried to use him as a suicide bomber, is back in Australia after being cleared of a plot to blow up a passenger jet.
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Exclusive: Cleared of an evil plot to blow up a passenger jet over the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Amer Khayat has returned to Australia to restart his life.
The father-of-two, whose brothers were found guilty of the attempted bombing of the Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi in 2017, is back from Lebanon where he was held awaiting trial for more than two years in a Lebanese jail.
“He flew back on a commercial plane last week,” Khayat’s lawyer Jocelyne al-Rai told News Corp Australia in a translated interview.
“He was alone, there were no Australian authorities with him.”
She said he had not provided details of what he was planning to do in Australia or where he would live.
Khayat, 42, had been staying with one of his brothers, Fadi, in the Lebanese town of Tripoli after his release last month.
The father-of-two previously told News Corp he would try to reunite with his two teenage daughters when he arrived home.
He had been unable to contact his high school-aged children while he was in Lebanon, saying they had changed their phone number.
Khayat had split with his wife before he left for Lebanon and his brothers were accused of planning to use him as a suicide bomber because they claimed he had drank alcohol and had been a “bad Muslim”.
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He was caught in the tangled web of his brothers’ plot to blow up the Etihad Airways jet, carrying around 400 passengers, on July 15, 2017.
They planted a bomb in a meat grinder and a Barbie doll in Amer’s luggage which were timed to explode 20 minutes’ after take off on the flight he was taking.
An airline staff member refused to accept Amer’s luggage because it was overweight.
Khaled Khayat, 51, and Mahmoud Khayat, 34, were found guilty of the plot in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Khaled had told police during a three-day interview that he had changed his mind on the bomb plot when he saw children at the airport.
He told police he thought “Don’t do it, don’t be stupid, don’t do it” and removed the bomb from the luggage.
His barrister later told a court that Khaled had actually been trying to avert the plot.
The jury did not believe him and found him guilty in May but could not agree on a verdict for Mahmoud.
Another jury found Mahmoud guilty of planning or preparing a terrorist act in September.
The pair also had plans for a poisonous gas attack, a court heard.
Khaled had the correct formula for a deadly gas, written in Arabic, on a piece of paper when he was arrested.
The plots were prepared with the help of another brother Tareq, and a “controller” linked to Islamic State.
Tareq was convicted and sentenced to death in Iraq last year for his involvement in Islamic State.
Amer has disowned his brothers, saying in a Lebanese tribunal that “blood had turned to water”.
stephen.drill@news.co.uk