Extremists torched Fawkner mosque in ‘cowardly’ attack
An IS-inspired “team of terrorists” has been slapped with serious jail time for burning down a Melbourne mosque in a “cowardly” attack on religious freedom.
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Three Islamic State-inspired terrorists who torched a Melbourne mosque have been jailed.
It is just the third conviction before Australian courts of committing a terrorist act.
Abdullah Chaarani, 28, and Ahmed Mohamed, 26, were ordered to spend at least 17 years of a 22-year term behind bars for their “callous, cowardly, vindictive” attack on the Imam Ali Islamic Centre in Fawkner in December 2016.
Hatim Moukhaiber, 30, was jailed for 16 years and will be eligible for parole after serving 12 years, for his involvement.
CCTV captured the trio entering the mosque with a jerry can and igniting the male prayer room.
Chaarani was also seen on security footage spray-painting Arabic phrases in support of Islamic State on the outer walls.
A jury found the trio each guilty of engaging in a terrorist act in May. Sentencing the trio, Justice Andrew Tinney called them “a team of terrorists” and described their acts as “heinous” and “an attack on religious freedom”.
“Your crime is very difficult to understand and quite impossible to excuse,” Justice Tinney said.
He said the radicalised trio were “motivated by hatred, intolerance, malevolence and misguided piety” towards the Shia community that attended the mosque.
The court heard Chaarani and Mohamed had failed in an earlier arson attempt at the mosque on November 24, before recruiting Moukhaiber.
The pair are also awaiting sentence over an evil Christmas Day terror plot of which another jury found them guilty in December.
The duo, alongside brothers Ibrahim and Hamza Abbas, plotted an attack at Federation Square they hoped would see scores of innocent Victorians slaughtered as payback for Australia’s war on Islamic State. Justice Tinney said the men’s case was only the third in Australia for engaging in a terrorist act.
Bangladeshi student Momena Shoma was last month jailed for 42 years for stabbing her Melbourne homestay host in a terror act. Shoma admitted engaging in a terror act when she plunged a knife into Roger Singaravelu’s neck while he dozed beside his five-year-old daughter at Mill Park on February 9, 2018.
Shoma, then 24, had been in Australia on a student visa for just a week when she attacked Mr Singaravelu using a 25cm kitchen knife.
In May, Sydney man Ihsas Khan was jailed for 36 years, with a minimum term of 27 years, after a jury found him guilty of committing a terrorist act over a stabbing attack on his neighbour.