Terror plotter Ibrahim Abbas fights for sentence reduction over foiled CBD attack
A radicalised jihadi whose terror plot was foiled before he could go on a Christmas killing spree in Melbourne’s CBD wants his prison sentence cut.
Police & Courts
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A radicalised jihadi jailed for at least 20 years for plotting a CBD terror attack wants a reduction in his sentence.
Ibrahim Abbas was the ringleader of a homegrown terror squad who planned the mass murder of scores of innocent Victorians in a city attack planned for Christmas 2016.
Seeking leave to appeal today his lawyer Gideon Boas told the Victorian Court of Appeal that while his client could have been jailed for life, the 24 year maximum sentence was manifestly excessive.
Dr Boas told the court that in sentencing Abbas, Supreme Court judge Justice Andrew Tinney didn’t properly consider Abbas’ plea of guilty.
In sentencing Abbas, Justice Tinney said he wasn’t convinced the plea was evidence of remorse, or acceptance of responsibility for his offending.
Dr Boas said it didn’t matter why Abbas confessed, he should ultimately have received a more significant sentence reduction.
Reserving their decision Court of Appeal justices Phillip Priest, Stephen Kaye and Terry Forrest said the sentence could be considered moderate.
“The overall conspiracy, the plan, was of such seriousness, that 24 years might perfectly adequately reflect the mitigating circumstances,” Justice Forrest said.
“There was the potential for carnage.”
Abbas recruited his brother, cousin and a friend to plot an attack around Melbourne’s CBD.
He was arrested days before the group planned to strike, and made confessions to police after he realised he had been under covert surveillance.
Prosecutors have argued that the confessions were less than complete, with Abbas trying to cover-up for his co-accused.
“I wanted to make sure that the casualties would be high, the bigger the better,” he later said.
“The bigger the more terror is achieved, and that’s the point.
“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.”
Sentencing Abbas Justice Tinney said his planned attack would have had catastrophic consequences.
“It would have been, as was your intention, a crime which would shock this country to the core,” he said.
Two of his co-conspirators, Ahmed Mohamed and Abdullah Chaarani, as well as a third man Hatim Moukhaiber, are also appealing convictions over an attack on a Melbourne mosque.
The 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.
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