Christmas terror plot ringleader appeals sentence
The ringleader of a homegrown terror group who was jailed for 20 years after planning to kill scores of people in a Christmas terror attack in Melbourne’s CBD is appealing his sentence.
Police & Courts
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A radicalised jihadi jailed for 20 years for plotting a CBD terror attack is appealing against his sentence.
Ibrahim Abbas was the ringleader of a homegrown terror squad who planned to murder scores of people in a city attack at Christmas 2016.
His appeal comes as two of his co-conspirators seek to fight convictions over a separate attack on a mosque.
“I wanted to make sure that the casualties would be high, the bigger the better,” Abbas later said. “The bigger, the more terror is achieved, and that’s the point.”
Abbas is serving a maximum 24-year sentence, with a 20-year non-parole period.
Sentencing Abbas, Justice Tinney said his planned attack would have been catastrophic.
“It would have been, as was your intention, a crime which would shock this country to the core,” he said. “It would have represented a shocking and entirely unjustified attack upon our democratic system, a system under which you were brought up and have always lived, but whose rules you so flagrantly chose to ignore.”
Two of his co-conspirators, Ahmed Mohamed and Abdullah Chaarani, as well as a third man, Hatim Moukhaiber, are appealing against convictions over an attack on a Melbourne mosque.
Those three men were each found guilty of engaging in a terrorist act and became the first Australians to be convicted for committing a completed terrorist act on local soil.
But in the Court of Appeal on Friday it was revealed the three had been refused Legal Aid funding to appeal.
Justice Philip Priest slammed Victoria Legal Aid, saying a two-month delay in deciding whether or not funding would be granted was unacceptable.
He demanded an explanation from a VLA representative, and said significant court time had already been spent preparing for the appeal.
Justice Priest said if the men failed to secure funding, they could be forced to represent themselves, or their lawyers could act pro bono.
The court heard the appeal of Moukhaiber, in particular, would raise significant legal questions that could have wide-reaching consequences.
Justice Priest said he wanted an update on Monday.
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