IS killers blew up plane over Egypt but Sydney plot failed
A Sydney man convicted over a plot to blow up an Etihad plane over Australia has told police “the same people” who blew up a plane over Egypt, in which 200 tourists were killed, were behind the Australian attempt.
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The same people who blew up a plane over Egypt killing more than 200 tourists were behind the attempt to bring down an Etihad plane over Australia, according to a Sydney man convicted over the plot.
Khaled Khayat, 51, told police “the same people’’ and the “same methodology’’ were behind the Egyptian and Australian plots.
Danish intelligence sources have confirmed to public broadcaster DR that Basil Hassan, a Lebanese-Danish engineer, was the ringleader of both plots.
The Herald Sun has previously reported that Hassan was believed to be the mastermind of the Etihad bomb plot, along with Tarek Khayat, who was a senior Islamic State official in Syria and is Khaled Khayat’s older brother.
Documents from the NSW Supreme Court show that Khaled Khayat admitted his involvement in the Etihad plot, in which explosive material was packed into a meat-grinder and Barbie doll and taken to Sydney Airport in a bag.
It was designed to bring down an Abu-Dhabi bound Etihad Airways plane leaving Sydney on July 15, 2017, but never made it onto the plane after the bag was rejected for being too heavy. The explosives, posted undetected from Turkey, were not intercepted by Australian police and security agencies, who only found out about the plot afterwards from a foreign intelligence agency. The bomb would have brought down the plane and killed more than 400 people.
On October 31, 2015, Metrojet flight 9268 crashed after takeoff in Egypt, killing 224 mostly Russian tourists. IS claimed responsibility and it was revealed a small bomb had been placed in the plane’s rear luggage compartment.
The IS online propaganda magazine Dabiq later published photographs of a can of Schweppes Gold pineapple juice and explosive materials that it claimed formed the bomb. The plane crashed 23 minutes after it took off from the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh bound for St Petersburg in Russia.
In the NSW documents, Khaled Khayat discussed an Egyptian plane crash with police during his interview.
“There was a plane blown up over Egypt. It was done by these same people, using the same methodology,’’ he is recorded as having told Operation Silves investigators.
Khayat and his younger brother Mahmoud, 34, are to face court for sentencing next month after they were found guilty by two juries of conspiring to do acts in preparation for a terror attack.
Their older brother Tarek is on death row in Iraq after being convicted of being an IS member.
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A fourth brother, Amer, is back in Australia after being found not guilty by a Lebanese military court of involvement in the plot.
Police in Lebanon had claimed Amer Khayat told them the bomb, which had been placed in his luggage, had been timed to go off 20 minutes after takeoff, which would have placed the plane over the Blue Mountains.
Danish national broadcaster DR last week reported that several intelligence sources had confirmed that Basil Hassan was behind both the Egyptian and Australian bomb plots.