Sydney counter-terror raids: Sydney terror cell targeted flight but changed plans at last minute
UPDATE: At least 15 officers are swarming over the Surry Hills property at the centre of an alleged terrorist plot involving a bomb on a plane. Police have also towed away two parked cars from a nearby street.
NSW
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AT LEAST 15 officers are swarming over the Surry Hills property at the centre of an alleged terrorist plot involving a bomb on a plane.
The contingent includes two police rescue and bomb unit officers.
Just before 4pm an officer climbed up a ladder and put a blue tarpaulin over a tin flat garage roof, tying it down with rope.
At the same time, two police rescue and bomb unit officers entered the property next door to the house raided.
At about 5pm police officers towed two Toyota cars from nearby Wilton St. One of the cars contained various items of clothing, shoes, CDs, general rubbish and a brown 50cm polished timber implement in the back seat.
Earlier, Federal Police officers returned to the Wiley Park address where former butcher Khaled Khayat was arrested on Saturday over the alleged terrorist plot involving placing a bomb on a plane.
Shortly before lunchtime today, two AFP officers drove up to the door of the Renown Ave address, where they knocked on the door, but didn’t enter the ground-floor apartment.
They departed a short time later.
Neighbours have described Saturday’s dramatic raids in which Khayat was held for questioning over an alleged plot to bring down a plane as chaotic.
No charges have been laid.
“There were cops everywhere, they wouldn’t let us leave the house. It was hectic,” one said.
In developments earlier today, one of four men arrested over the alleged plot was released without charge, police said.
Federal police have spent days rifling through several properties across Sydney following the arrest on Saturday afternoon of the men on suspicion of being behind the conspiracy.
A 50-year-old man was released from police custody last night without being charged with a criminal offence, a joint statement from the AFP and NSW Police said this morning.
The remaining three men will stay in detention under special powers which allow police to hold them for up to a week.
“This investigation remains ongoing, and further information will be provided at an appropriate time,” the statement said.
Overnight police revealed the international flight had been earmarked for a suicide attack by the alleged Sydney terror cell but they changed plans at the last minute.
“It was as close to a major terror attack as we have ever come,” a senior source said.
It has also been confirmed suspects arrested in the weekend’s police raids have links to known terrorists locally and in Syria, including some currently facing trial for a terrorist-related murder.
He said the alleged plan to bring down a plane with up to 500 passengers was close to being carried out.
Two of those arrested at the weekend, including spray painter Khaled Merhi, are related to Australian-born Islamic State fighter Ahmed Merhi, sources said.
Ahmed Merhi is well-known to the country’s spy agency ASIO.
He was being sent money in Syria via one of the Western Sydney men arrested in 2014 as part of Operation Appleby, the massive three-year state and federal investigation into domestic terrorism plots.
It targeted a group of 18 men in Sydney “willing and able” to carry out an IS order to kill a “nonbeliever” and drape their body in an IS flag. None of the men arrested at the weekend were targeted by Operation Appleby.
Ahmed Merhi is related to Khaled Merhi, who was arrested on Saturday at the Cleveland St, Surry Hills, house where he lived with his parents. He is believed to have run up thousands of dollars of gambling debts and was taken into custody with a bandage around his head.
READ MORE: Renown Ave, the street at the centre of new arrests, well known to police
One of Khaled Merhi’s other relatives was arrested at a rented two-bedroom flat in Punchbowl, where he lived with one of his five sisters.
There is no suggestion that any family member other than the men who were arrested had anything to do with the alleged plot.
The other two men, including former butcher Khaled Khayat, 50, who were arrested at Wiley Park and Lakemba are related to the Merhis via marriage and blood.
The bomb, which allegedly was to be hidden in a kitchen mixer, was set to be carried on to a flight as hand luggage.
“They had hatched a date prior to their arrest for the attack, but had then delayed the attack,” a source said.
Etihad Airways is working with the Australian Federal Police after reports that it was one of their flights from Sydney to Abu Dhabi that was targeted.
“Etihad is complying fully with the enhanced security measures at airports in Australia and monitoring the situation closely. Safety is the airline’s number one priority,” an Etihad spokesman said.
READ MORE: Why counter-terror police had to act
He said airline records showed that none of the men arrested had bought air-tickets on any Etihad flights in July or August.
NSW counter-terrorism police successfully applied to the state’s chief magistrate for permission to hold them for seven days under the section of the Commonwealth Crimes Act that states “detention of the person is necessary to preserve or obtain evidence or to complete the investigation into the offence or into another terrorism offence”.
Khaled Merhi’s father, Omar Merhi, broke his silence yesterday to deny his son is a terrorist.
Khaled Merhi’s behaviour was said by friends to have been erratic in the days leading up to his arrest.
They said he lost his job as a van driver last week having racked up thousands of dollars in debt gambling on horses and failed to turn up to Botany Powder Coaters on Friday.
“He kept not turning up so I told him I wasn’t interested in employing him anymore,” his boss, who asked not to be named, said.
“He was always smiling and laughing, you’d never think he was capable of anything to do with terrorists.”
The Merhi family, originally from Beirut, bought their terraced Surry Hills home in 1974 and brought up their 14 children there.
Khaled was the only one who never married but he has a seven-year-old daughter after a volatile long-term relationship with a Lebanese-born woman from Canberra.
His father Omar, 76, said Khaled was christened at the Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral of St George in Redfern.
“He has never been to a mosque in his life,” Omar said yesterday.
“It’s bulls … that he wanted to blow up a plane, he works hard for his child and his girlfriend, who was always asking him for money, $150 here and there for jewellery and clothes, it was never enough, it felt like he was working to buy everything for her.
“In my 47 years in Australia, I’ve never had a problem with police and nor has any of my children.”
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