Born and raised in Melbourne, terror plotter Ibrahim Abbas wanted to kill us all
Ibrahim Abbas almost carried out the most devastating terror attack ever to be staged on Australian soil. How could a boy born and raised in Melbourne grow up wanting to kill us all?
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Ibrahim Abbas came within days of executing the most devastating terror attack ever to be staged on Australian soil.
He had given himself until Christmas Day, 2016.
By then, and no later, he would strap on a suicide vest, arm himself with a machete, and wage jihad on innocent Melburnians.
Federation Square, St Paul’s Cathedral and Flinders St station had all been considered as ideal attack sites.
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The starting point may have still been in question, but the end was non-negotiable: he would murder as many people as he could, blow himself up, and enter paradise a martyr and hero.
The attack was months, probably more, in the making.
But it was in the nearly three months before his December 22 arrest that Abbas carried out his plans unaware he was under heavy surveillance by anti-terror police.
They swooped just in time.
Abbas made full admissions to police soon after his arrest.
He admitted pledging allegiance to Islamic State
He admitted working to recruit his brother, cousin, and friend to join his crusade.
He admitted wanting to kill as many Australians as he could.
And he admitted he was proud of his evil plan.
It’s left many people asking how a boy born and raised in Melbourne can grow up to want to kill us all.
Brought up as a peaceful Muslim
Abbas didn’t think much about religion until he was about 19.
He’d been educated at Darul Ulum College, a Muslim school in Melbourne’s north, from Prep to Year 12, but didn’t leave with a strong attachment to his faith.
At home he spoke English and Arabic and was encouraged to pursue Islamic values and practices by his taxi-driver father.
His mother was not religious at all.
The couple had moved to Melbourne from Lebanon and had three children here, Ibrahim the second.
“I was raised Muslim but the way I am today and how I was raised to be a certain type of Muslim, that is different,” he said.
“I was raised to be a very peaceful, nice, loving Muslim which every Muslim should be but obviously in certain situations, certain circumstances, you know, you shouldn’t always turn the next cheek to get slapped.”
His parents divorced, his dad remarried, and Ibrahim lived a normal family life in that context, switching homes routinely to spend time with both parents.
He was reportedly a good student, albeit with some disruptive behavioural problems, but completed his VCE.
He even went onto university, completing just bits of different courses but dropping them as he became bored.
“I found studying too easy,” he boasted during his brother’s trial.
“So I found it boring to attend these lectures, but I was a good student and at times I got very good scores.”
While at university Abbas turned to atheism for a short period believing religion was “complete bullshit”.
He never drank, experimented with cannabis, and spend most of his time playing computer games.
His obsession was such that he’d later be diagnosed as qualifying for an Internet Gaming Disorder.
It was an otherwise normal teenage life.
Uncle’s death changed everything
It was the death of an uncle when he was 19 that set Abbas on his radical path.
“After he passed away … I began to re-evaluate my belief in God and I began to believe in God again, and then thereafter I became religious and started to seek knowledge, familiarise myself with the faith,” he said.
“I listened to scholars that would talk about the life of the prophet. I’d read books, attend lectures, go to the mosque, have discussions with people about the Islamic religion,” he said.
“I began to watch YouTube videos that explain Islamic teachings.”
Many of the videos he watched and collected were Islamic State or Al-Qaeda publications that would show beheadings, bomb-making guides and various lectures.
Abbas spent days on end watching the clips, reading about radical Islam, and being influenced by figures including Osama bin Laden.
His cousin Nabil introduced him to the teaching of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a scholar he followed closely.
Nabil would go on to be killed fighting for Islamic State overseas.
After his arrest Abbas told federal police that he immediately embraced a jihadi ideology and went “straight into the deep end”.
By 2014 he had pledged allegiance to IS.
As a true supporter of IS Abbas wanted to see the introduction of Sharia Law to Australia, and believed he was obliged to carry out jihad.
“If Sharia was applied in Australia … all the people would fall under a contract. They would have to sign a contract to live with, among Muslims in peace,” he told police.
“Whoever does not sign that contract either leaves the country or is executed. He’s given the chance to leave the country. If he doesn’t want to leave he gets executed.”
He became obsessed with killing innocent people and government officials and damaging public infrastructure.
In the midst of it all he got married and had a child.
How the plotters came together
As his radicalisation took hold Abbas started spending much of his time at the Hume Islamic Youth Centre mosque complex in Coolaroo.
It had a restaurant, book store, prayer room, gym, games area, and classes to learn Arabic and about the Koran.
There was also a function space for people to get married and throw parties.
Going there was about being with people who thought the same way and meeting people from all different walks of life to celebrate their faith, he later recalled.
For five years he went every second day to pray, eat and train with friends.
“I believe Islam is a peaceful religion. A very, very simple religion. Simple meaning that our day to day lives is about being a normal human being and not harming our bodies and abiding by a set of rules, abiding by a set of rules which, which is all about making sure we live a natural human life, not the life of an animal.”
It was here the confessed introvert and loner worked to try and convince his only friends, brother Hamza, cousin Abudullah and friend Mohamed, to plan an act of terror with him.
He believed in the cause of IS and felt the deaths of any of its followers were the result of a war by the Western World, including Australia.
“I believed it was obligatory upon me to eventually commit an act of terror.”
Doing so would make him a martyr and grant him the status of shaheed.
“Your sins are forgiven, that’s the main thing, and you’re granted paradise immediately,” he explained of a shaheed.
“A shaheed is (also) given the option to choose family members or friends who have to spend a certain amount of time in hell before they can go to heaven; he gets to choose … who doesn’t spend time in hell.
“The general Muslim population who are not martyrs, they don’t enter paradise until the world is over and the judgment day occurs and they are judged, and then … they enter paradise or go to hell for a certain period of time.
“So, a shaheed enters paradise immediately upon death.”
“The bigger the better”
Whether his friends would join him or not, Abbas was convinced he had to carry out an attack.
At every opportunity he had, he tried to convince his mates to take part.
He had to kill as many people as possible.
“I wanted to make sure that the casualties would be high. The bigger the better,” Abbas testified.
He wanted to instil fear into Australians.
“The bigger the more terror is achieved, and that’s the point.”
He worked in his garage trying to build a bomb, tested it in country Victoria, and tried desperately not to trigger the suspicion of authorities.
He described in chilling detail his planning for the attack.
“I had ideas … where it would have been. It could have been New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve, or some other time in the future,” he said.
“It would have been (staged at) a place of congregation.”
“You could ram people with a car, you could use a knife attack, you could shoot people.
“I believed that if I could do a terrorist attack here then that would prevent the Australian government from financing the war against Islamic State and it would send a clear message to the Australian public about the damage, the loss of lives, that occurs in the Muslim world where the Australian government is financing the war against Islamic State.”
He told police the group had considered staging an attack in St Kilda before turning their attention to the CBD and Federation Square.
Flinders St station was also considered, he said, but ruled out because of fears the group would get trapped inside the station.
“I was forcing them that we should, um, wear vests, explosive vests and then, um, we’re gunna ram a policeman and get his gun and then I was gunna give that gun to whoever I deemed fit to use the gun and then we were gunna go to the city square and, um, one person would use the gun and, um, I was gunna just — whoever I see I was gunna chop and chopping to kill,” he told police.
After months of planning, Abbas and his mates were arrested as authorities feared an attack was imminent.
He’d been unaware he’d been under surveillance for months.
After hours of police interviews in which Abbas boasted of his grand plan, the remorseless wannabe terrorist had a simple message.
“What I planned to do did not have to happen if Australia was not killing Muslims.
“That’s all I’ve got to say.”
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