Tinny terrorists jailed after admitting bumbling jihad plot
Six bungling terror wannabes have admitted an audacious plan to sail a small boat to the Philippines to help overthrow that government. But the plot was so ridiculous it was later acknowledged the men could never have completed the voyage.
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Six bungling terror wannabes have admitted an audacious plan to sail a small boat to the Philippines to help overthrow that government.
But the plot — which involved towing a 7m craft from Bendigo to launch it in Far North Queensland and then set sail to South East Asia — was so ridiculous it was later acknowledged the men could never have completed the sea voyage.
In fact, Supreme Court Justice Michael Croucher said ringleader Robert “Musa” Cerantonio’s “poorly planned venture was foredoomed to failure” as the novice boatmen’s “ill-suited vessel” would never have made it “past the breakers off far north of Queensland”.
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On Friday four of the tinnie terrorists were jailed for their roles in the 2016 plot, bringing to an end more than 18 months of protracted Supreme Court hearings.
The case has been secretly moving through the court since the men were ordered to stand trial.
But suppression orders were lifted when the final accused man, Shayden Thorne, pleaded guilty to a foreign incursion offence that carried a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Murat Kaya, 28, was jailed for three years and eight months while his younger brother Kadir, 24, Paul Dacre, 33, and Antonio Granata, 28, were each sentenced to four years with a three-year non-parole period.
But because the men have been on remand for more than 1000 days since their arrest in 2016, they will each be eligible for release this year, with freedom a possibility for Murat Kaya as early as next week.
Because of the nature of their crimes they could be held indefinitely on a continuing detention order following their jail term. Sentencing the men, Supreme Court justice Michael Croucher said he hoped that didn’t happen.
“While it is, of course, difficult to predict how persons will behave in the future, on the material that I have seen over the life of these and related proceedings, I think it would be unduly harsh — and potentially counter-productive — to make a continuing detention order against any of these four accused,” he said.
Cerantonio and Thorne have not yet been sentenced.
Between 2015 and 2016, the men planned their trip to the Philippines, stockpiling weapons and clothing from outdoor stores, including Kathmandu, BCF and Ray’s Outdoors. They armed themselves with travel a portable solar power charging system, various sleeping bags and sleeping mats, first-aid kits and travel guides in preparation for the voyage.
Between May 6 and 10, 2016, all but Murat Kaya travelled together in a Hyundai Terracan SUV, purchased the day before, towing a Haines Hunter boat to the Cape York Peninsula north of Cairns, where they were arrested.
“The whole venture was poorly planned and, I fear, foredoomed to failure,” Justice Croucher said.
“Given the ill-suited vessel that had and their lack of serious boating experience, it is hard to imagine that they would have made it very far past the breakers off far north of Queensland.”
The men wanted to travel to the Philippines, where Cerantonio had hoped to fight to force the overthrow of the government in favour of the establishment of Islamic Law.
They planned the voyage for more than six months, and expected their partners and children to join them there.
If they made it, Cerantonio, who lived in the Philippines between 2013 and 2014, was the only member of the group expected to engage in direct conflict. The rest of the group looked to him for “spiritual guidance”.
He lectured and gave sermons to the group and published writings and translated speeches online.
He had been advocating for the establishment of an Islamic State in the Philippines since 2014 writing: “Allah commands us as believers to fight those who have fought us and driven us out from our lands that we ruled over.
“This means that we as Muslims MUST fight the Philippine government as they are the ones who have taken control of our lands from us and instituted un-islamic laws upon us.”
Murat Kaya had originally intended to travel with the group but pulled out and was not part of plans the men had for their wives and children to later join them.
JIHADIS GO FROM TINNY TO THE CAN
IT was a harebrained scheme doomed to fail from the start.
A gang of wannabe jihadists from Melbourne believed they could tow a boat to Far North Queensland and then negotiate treacherous waters to take up arms for Islamic State.
The men behind the flawed plot — dubbed the “tinnie terrorists” and led by IS preacher Robert “Musa” Cerantonio — on Friday pleaded guilty to their ill-fated plan.
A group of five Melbourne men met in Bendigo where they bought a 7m fibreglass boat they intended to travel in from Queensland to Asia.
They attached their getaway vessel to the back of a Mitsubishi 4WD and stuffed it with petrol, water and maps.
Cerantonio issued a war cry before the journey: “You will find people who are ready for jihad, jihad runs in their veins.
“You don’t come to them and teach them how to fight but what you will do is find people who will teach them properly.
“We will teach them the religion of Allah, we will teach them the depths of the religion.”
Their car broke down at least three times during its 3000km road trip to the top of the sunshine state, a mission which took 87 hours. It passed multiple police checkpoints, where officers watched on carefully as the men attempted to get themselves, their boat and dreams of jihad to the top of Australia.
Cerantonio, Paul Dacre, Shayden Thorne, Kadir Kaya and Antonio Granata were arrested near Cairns on May 10, 2016. Kadir’s brother, Murat Kaya, was caught a short time later in Melbourne.
He had planned to travel separately to the Philippines with the other men’s wives.
The bungling bunch thought taking inland roads in their spluttering car would help them avoid detection, but police were monitoring them.
They pulled into the remote Palmer River Roadhouse to stock up on fuel and iced coffee.
Roadhouse employee Andrew Steward said the “jihadi fishermen” stuck out like sore thumbs.
“They just looked out of place,” he said. “They (were dressed) normal, pretty casually in shorts — it was only for the beards.”
Police stopped by a short time later and Mr Steward told them: “You just missed them.”
Officers from Victoria and Queensland’s counter-terrorism teams eventually arrested the men at a river crossing in Laura, long before their getaway boat hit the water. They were stopped 1km from the start of a notoriously bad dirt road — still an 18-hour drive from their planned launch point at Weipa on the western flank of Cape York Peninsula.
The men had planned to island hop from Australia to West Papua and then continue on to the Philippines where they wanted to join IS sympathiser Abu Sayyaf in a bid to gain control of the region.
One of the terrorist plotters had a 50-page IS manual, downloaded from the internet, among his personal effects.
The men, aged between 21 and 33 at the time, had previously had their passports cancelled.
Murat and Kadir Kaya, and Thorne made failed attempts to leave Australia on one-way tickets in 2015.
Thorne was arrested in Saudi Arabia on terror charges in 2011 and deported to Australia three years later.
Cerantonio was watched by the AFP for more than a month before he left from his home on the doomed mission.
The extremist used social media for years to preach Islamic State ideology and had a wide following among IS fighters on the Syrian and Iraqi front lines.