Federation Square terror plotter Ali Khalif Shire Ali gets more jail time for ‘terrifying’ plan
A wannabe terrorist who plotted to gun down New Year’s Eve revellers in Melbourne will spend more time in jail. This is why.
The wannabe terrorist who plotted to gun down revellers celebrating New Year’s Eve in Melbourne will spend an extra six years behind bars for his “terrifying” plan.
Ali Khalif Shire Ali had pleaded guilty to intentionally doing an act in preparation or planning a terrorist act. Her wanted to take hostages and gun down people gathered at Federation Square in 2017.
The 23-year-old will now spend 16 years behind bars for the Islamic State-inspired plot after the Court of Appeal on Friday found the original sentence was “manifestly inadequate”.
“It cannot be doubted that the terrorist act for which the respondent planned and prepared was of the most terrible kind. He intended to inflict mass casualties on random members of the public, gathered together at a time of annual civic celebration,” the judges found.
The “sinister” element of hostage taking was aimed to subject a smaller group of victims to a more “intimately terrifying encounter”, they wrote in the decision.
Prosecutors pushed for a longer sentence, arguing the original sentence of 10 years with a non-parole period of seven-and-half wasn’t enough.
The objective gravity and Ali’s moral culpability were at the highest level because of the serious nature of the plot, and his preparedness to commit them meant he should spend more time behind bars, they said.
Ali was arrested five weeks before he planned to carry out the attack.
But the Werribee man renounced terrorist organisation IS when he took to the stand at a pre-sentence hearing in November last year.
“I hate them for the actions they committed, the innocent lives they have taken for no reason,” Ali said at the time.
His brother, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, was shot dead in 2018 after he went on a stabbing spree in Bourke Street, killing Pellegrini’s owner Sisto Malaspina.
“I hate them for what they did to my brother,” he said of the terror group.
With his new non-parole period of 12 years and with time served, Ali will be eligible for parole in late 2029.