Amer Khayat returning to Australia after he was cleared of plane bomb plot
A Sydney dad cleared of plotting to blow up an Etihad Airways flight over the Blue Mountains has walked free from a Beirut jail but not without a message for his judge.
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Amer Khayat has tasted freedom for the first time in 26 months after he was released from a Beirut jail tonight.
The Sydney father of two was cleared this week of plotting to blow up an Etihad Airways flight over the Blue Mountains in July 2017.
Khayat said he was relieved to be free and would spend some time with family in Lebanon before returning home.
“I am oppressed, I was wronged in my homeland,” he said.
Khayat raised his Australian passport for a photographer and said he would not return to Lebanon.
“I will certainly give up my Lebanese nationality. I will return to Australia,” he said.
He added a message to the judge who presided over his case: “God forgives him because he left me in prison.”
His brother Fadi greeted him at the gates of the prison and he will soon return to Australia where his daughters live.
Khayat should have been released yesterday but paperwork issues kept him behind bars for another night.
The Sydney man was cleared by a military tribunal in Beirut over allegations he planned to carry bombs, disguised as a meat grinder and a Barbie doll, on an Etihad Airways flight on July 15, 2017.
The tribunal found him not guilty based on insufficient evidence.
His brothers Khaled Khayat, 51, and Mahmoud Khayat, 34, were found guilty in the New South Wales Supreme Court — Khaled was found guilty in May and Mahmoud late yesterday over the plot.
Amer claimed that another brother, Tarek Khayat, an Islamic State Commander in Syria, had been the mastermind.
Tarek Khayat was last year sentenced to death in Iraq after he admitted he was an accountant for Islamic State.
Details of the cases had been suppressed while the trials were continuing but the order was lifted today.
While awaiting release Amer Khayat spoke of how desperate he was to get back to family.
“I want to get back to my daughters, I want to go back home,” he said.
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At an earlier hearing this month, he said he disowned his brothers who had embroiled him in the plot.
“I have nothing to do with all this. My brothers take the responsibility. I will hold them to account when I go out and blood will become water,” he said.
Brigadier-General Hussein Abdullah, leading the military tribunal, accepted his argument that he was duped into attempting to carry the bombs.
Amer Khayat pleaded with him before the verdict was handed down: “I am not Islamic State, I don’t look like them. Why do you want to keep me here? I am innocent. Please look at me, can you see me as an Islamic State fighter?”
The plot was foiled because a staff member at Sydney airport refused to accept his luggage, which included the meat grinder bomb, because it was too heavy.
The bombs were taken out of the luggage and Amer Khayat boarded the jet to Abu Dhabi and then travelled on to Lebanon where he was arrested when news of the plot broke.
Amer Khayat’s lawyer Jocelyn Adib Al Rahi told the court that Australian authorities had found that he was a pawn in his brothers’ twisted plot.
“The Australian Attorney-General said that Amer Khayat became a suicide bomber without knowing,” she told the court, according to a translation.
“Amer has a weak personality. He spent 65 days detained by the Internal Security Forces in the Information branch.”
Amer Khayat had retracted a confession that he knew about the bombs, claiming that he made the statement under duress.
However, he retracted that claim as well, when the confession was scrapped.
The AFP had said in August 2017 that Amer Khayat was unaware of the bombs in his luggage.
The bombs were timed to go off 20 minutes after takeoff while the plane was due to be over Sydney’s Blue Mountains.