Man who plotted to blow up Mardi Gras and naval base also targeted his own court hearing

It was a murderous bombing plot that would have caused fear across Sydney and now, for the first time, the inner workings of Sydney radicals known as The Shura can be revealed.

Homegrown terror mastermind Hamdi Alqudsi plotted to blow up Sydney’s Mardi Gras, a harbour naval base and even his own court hearing, and for the first time the inner workings of his murderous cell, and how foreign Islamists helped them, can be revealed.

Alqudsi is staring down the barrel of a maximum 25 years in jail when he is sentenced on Monday for directing the gang of western Sydney radicals who called themselves The Shura.

Sourcing handguns and M16s, The Shura had grand plans of murder in Sydney after several attempts by the group to join Islamic State saw them turn their attention to terror Down Under.

But they were thwarted by police when for the first time undercover operatives from the NSW and Australian Federal Police (AFP) infiltrated a domestic Islamic terror organisation and dismantled it from the inside.

Alqudsi, a former security guard and Woolworths worker, formed The Shura 10 years ago at his home in Revesby in western Sydney.

Hamdi Alqudsi faces up to 25 years in prison.

The brazen nature of their planned attacks in 2013 and the level of violence they threatened was breathtaking.

Among their plans, they plotted to attack Mardi Gras in Sydney, set off explosives near the Woolloomooloo naval base and even floated blowing up Alqudsi’s court hearing to kill police and a witness in the case against him.

According to court documents, the naval base attack would have seen the deaths of “navy personnel and resulting in our own (deaths), in ourselves being killed at the end”.

On the day of the Lindt siege The Shura even met in a park to talk through a plan “to get” the AFP.

And they had help from jihadists overseas.

The Mardi Gras was going to be targeted by the terror cell. Picture: Tracey Nearmy

Court papers state during a Shura meeting at Alqudsi’s Revesby home they discussed the possibility of an Islamic State operative in Syria teaching them how to make an improvised explosive device.

Alqudsi, police said, had fostered relationships with overseas Islamic State contacts and asked Shura members to pledge allegiance to the bloodthirsty terror organisation.

In messages obtained by police, by this time Alqudsi was already radicalised, having messaged Islamic State members abroad to have his name “put on a list of martyrdom operations”.

Their man in Syria – identified in material as “Barayalei” – shared ideas about attacks that would kill foreign tourists.

Alqudsi today in custody, who claims to have denounced his extremist views.

Others they had contacted, the documents state, were based in Iraq.

But if they were to carry their plans out they had to be careful.

Alqudsi directed his underlings to “stay under the radar” and avoid mistakes of other groups who had been sprung by police.

They included only stockpiling guns until the last ­minute before an attack and using codewords such as “football” and “soccer” to describe going to Syria when talking on the phone.

One Shura member obtained “a jammer” to disrupt nosy cops and during meetings they would write their plans on whiteboards rather than speaking them aloud – according to court documents.

Another said he could source guns from a well-known Sydney crime family based out of Merrylands to carry out attacks. The Israeli embassy in Canberra was also discussed as a possible target.

The Shura also had plans to target a naval base. Picture: Monique Harmer

In denying he was always the leader of The Shura, Alqudsi’s lawyers said they were just “disgruntled people frustrated and angry at police”.

But prosecutors described them as “no longer a rag tag group” by the time they plotted murder.

For the first time in the 10 years he has been before the courts in often secret court hearings, just what was going through Alqudsi’s mind at the time can be exposed.

In a psychiatric report tendered to court, he tells a health professional just why he facilitated sending foreign fighters into Syria’s bloody civil war.

“I regret not pleading guilty because in my heart I was guilty,” he said.

In the candid conversation he tells the psychiatrist he wants to become a counsellor to stop young Muslim men becoming radicalised through videos on YouTube.

“That is how I became an extremist from watching YouTube. It was events in Syria … back in the 2011 Arab Spring,” he said.

Parramatta District Court was also a target.

“You get a person like me who has not had an education who is sensitive who would help anyone … I should have gone to a mufti or a sheik and asked them.

“I was very naive and silly and thought I should be helping the people oppressed. I believed I was doing the right thing but I was doing the wrong thing … I have learned all that the hard way.

“I can’t change the past and I regret what I have done … some of the boys who went to Syria and died and I regret what I have done.”

Alqudsi claims to be a changed man after a long stint inside Supermax.

During Alqudsi’s sentencing hearing earlier this month prison chaplain Ahmed Kilani said in court he did not believe Alqudsi was a religious extremist.

“I’ve never seen anything to show me he supports any form of religious extremism or violence from my conversations with him,” Mr Kilani said.

“He follows a very spiritual reading of Islam.”

Mr Kilani has spent years trying to rehabilitate the worst terrorists locked up in the infamous Goulburn jail, but said Alqudsi is not of their kind.

After first being found guilty of foreign incursion offences in 2013, Alqudsi was last year found guilty of directing the activities of The Shura from his Revesby home.

He faces the Parramatta District Court on Monday.

His lawyers will argue he has a good prospect of rehabilitation and has denounced his extremist views of violent jihad.

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