Reporting terrorism: separating facts from political, social postures

A visitor to Australia could be ­forgiven for thinking the biggest terrorism issue in the country is whether the local media accept ­Islamism is its cause.

In the modern “comment-is-king” media world, real reporting takes a back seat to megaphones on television, radio and in print who are more interested in backing the position of particular political favourites or culture war issues than engaging with facts and data.

Progressive media are often caught out trying to gloss over the role of radical Islam in attacks as they seek social causes, such as alienation and masculine cultural behaviours. For the right, the debate is not just about “left-shaming” but also about an agenda of restricting Muslim immigration.

This paper for at least 15 years has been at the forefront of ­reporting of terrorism cells in Australia. It’s why some of its ­reporters, editors and former ­cartoonist Bill Leak received death threats from Islamic State. More recently The Daily Telegraph in Sydney and the Herald-Sun in Melbourne have joined the fray.

Also rolling its sleeves up has been the ABC’s Four Corners under the woman who did much noughties terrorism reporting for this paper. Sally Neighbour has authored a book about Australia’s Mother of Mohammed, Rabbiah Hutchinson, once married to al-Qa’ida’s No 3 and ­mother of the infamous Ayub twins, both high on all US terrorism watch lists.

The recent murder and subsequent police shootout in Brighton, Melbourne, by Somalian refugee Yacub Khayre brought out the usual debate about ­whether journalists and politicians did or did not admit that refugees have committed most of the terror attacks here since 2014.

In fact, they have been ­involved in the last four fatal ­attacks. But the crimes committed by Khayre have raised far more substantive issues about parole and the nature of judicial res­ponses to terrorism.

Last Wednesday, the Victorian Supreme Court launched an ­investigation into comments by three federal government ministers in a report in this paper ­relating to an appeal by the commonwealth DPP against a 7½-year sentence for Sevdet Ramadan Besim. Besim had planned to behead a police officer on Anzac Day last year.

The three Victorian-based ­federal MPs cited by the court are Health Minister Greg Hunt, Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar and Human Services Minister Alan Tudge. They were required to make submissions for the Court of Appeal by Friday, as was this paper.

As noted QC and asylum-seeker campaigner Julian Burnside told ABC radio’s The World Today on Thursday, the Victorian court feels it has been undermined by comments it says went beyond legitimate criticism regarding its sentencing policies.

The community is sensitive after the public outcry about Brighton killer Khayre being out on bail. Besides various criminal convictions, Khayre was once charged during Operation Neath in 2009, in Melbourne, with planning to attack the Holsworthy army base in Sydney. The jury found there was not enough evidence to convict Khayre but three ringleaders were jailed.

So what could the media do better and where do parts of the judiciary and wider legal profession go wrong, especially those with human rights or defence barrister backgrounds?

The evidence shows nearly all people charged with terrorism offences in any given year have previously been among the outer circle of earlier terrorism plots.

It is also clear that most who commit offences have close family and friends who have also been radicalised.

This even applies to Khalil Mohammed Jabar, the 15-year-old Iraqi refugee schoolboy who murdered Chinese police worker Curtis Cheng outside Parramatta police headquarters in October 2015. He was radicalised by people targeted by Operation Appleby, many of whom were in turn radicalised by the circle around Operation Pendennis in 2005.

Leading terrorism expert Shandon Harris-Hogan, of the Australian Institute of Criminology, has written and spoken extensively of the role of family and associates in previous terrorism investigations in continued radicalisation of the young.

The evidence shows that for all the talk of financing deradicalisation programs — a regular favourite topic of the ABC and Fairfax Media — there is little proof they work. Nor is there evidence that time spent in prison diminishes the hot flames of radical Islam. In fact prison may be a key radicalising environment.

The main influence on radicalisation is “the close family and friendship influences which draw people into the network”, Harris-Hogan told Four Corners after the Cheng murder. Simply, these are not just alienated young men with mental issues.

Australia’s most famous Islamic State fighter, Khaled Sharrouf — whose seven-year-old son was first pictured on the front of this newspaper in 2015 holding two severed heads in Syria — was arrested and jailed after the Pendennis raids and released in 2009.

In sentencing remarks, NSW judge Anthony Whealy said many cell members “wear their imprisonment like some kind of badge of honour”. While his psychiatrist thought there was a good chance Sharrouf could rehabilitate, he skipped the country to join ISIS in 2013.

Prominent preachers for jihad — including self-proclaimed Melbourne Sheik Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who was part of the Pendennis plot to blow up Flinders Street station and possibly attack the nuclear facility at Sydney’s Lucas Heights, and two members of the Cheiko family in Sydney, who are all still jailed — have had many visits in prison from people who subsequently made their way to Iraq and Syria as jihadis.

This paper’s Cameron Stewart reported in 2004 that Melbourne Sheikh Mohammed Omran had invited Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, to Australia for a visit in the late 1990s.

Benbrika had attended a Victorian country address to meet Omran’s childhood friend, Abu Qutada, Europe’s leading terror recruiter, in the late 90s.

These stories outline a pattern of radicalisation that dates back long before the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks.

The patterns are complex and require much research by journalists and lawyers. Reflexive arguments about banning Muslim immigration worry the security authorities, who rely heavily on Muslims from within the community to monitor the behaviour of radicalising young family members.

Conversely, governments are right to be concerned that new refugees sign on to a set of values that signal they can make productive citizens.

The role of Somalian refugees and the earlier Lebanese concession by the Fraser government need to be well understood. Twitter rants by progressives accusing serious reporters of racism when they discuss these issues and the government of cynical dog whistling on citizenship reform and banning dual citizens from returning from Syrian jihad betray a deep level of ignorance.

Even more important, the media needs to scrutinise Islamic schools and report the speeches of our more radical sheiks, some of whose online incitements have already spread throughout Asia and into the US.