Terror brother who didn’t fit in duped into being a martyr
To say Amer Khayat had a difficult relationship with his brothers would be to put it mildly.
To say that Amer Khayat had a difficult relationship with his brothers would be to put it mildly.
On Saturday, July 15, 2017, Amer’s older brother Khaled drove his sibling to Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport, said his goodbyes, and then watched as his little brother made his way to the Etihad check-in counter. In Amer’s bag was a military-grade bomb Khaled — the headstrong senior member of the family — had built from scratch days earlier.
Khaled had smuggled the bomb into Amer’s bag without him knowing, with the intention that it detonate as the Etihad plane reached cruising altitude above the Western Plains of NSW, killing all on board, including Amer. But at the airport, amid an attack of nerves, or perhaps conscience, Khaled removed the bomb that he had concealed in a meat grinder, sparing both the passengers and his own brother from certain death.
Within two weeks Khaled, 51, and another younger brother, Mahmoud, 34, would be in police custody charged with a sophisticated terror plot that featured military-grade explosives, a shadowy Islamic State controller and what must be the most bizarre family dynamic counter-terrorism police have encountered.
The Weekend Australian can now reveal that Khaled’s son Mohammed, in his late 20s, has been sentenced in absentia in Beirut to 15 years’ jail, after evidence was provided to the Lebanese military court that he assisted in the bomb plot.
During the court hearing in Beirut last year, Amer said in written testimony that Mohammed had been at the inner-Sydney house of his brothers and gave him one of the two bomb packages just prior to heading to the airport.
When he gave evidence in person to the court, Amer said he didn’t believe Mohammed knew what was in the package that he gave him and that Mohammed was innocent. Australian authorities are adamant only Khaled and Mahmoud were involved in the Sydney end of the plot, effectively exonerating Mohammed.
On Thursday a Sydney court convicted Mahmoud of a single count of acts in preparation for a terrorist act. He joins Khaled, who earlier this year was convicted of the same offence. The two await a sentencing hearing where they will be dealt a prison spell likely to run into the decades.
On the same day Mahmoud learned his fate, the Lebanese court ordered Amer be freed after more than two years in a Beirut jail over his suspected involvement in the attack.
Amer plans to return to Australia to be with his two daughters. In the court hearing, he said his brothers had disowned him because he was a drug addict. His last words in the court this week were: “I have nothing to do with Islamic State and I don’t know who they are. I don’t like them.’’
He told the ABC last night he was innocent, holding up his Australian passport as he left prison. He said he didn’t believe his brothers tried to kill him.
Operation Silves, as the police investigation became known, uncovered a gothic family drama. It began when one Khayat brother lost his two sons to a Coalition airstrike in Syria, prompting him to reach out to another brother who, in rage and grief, was prepared to send a third, Amer, to his death in order to seek revenge.
Sometime prior to 2017, Tarek Khayat, a 46-year-old builder from Tripoli, journeyed to Syria to fight with Islamic State. He was a true believer, so much so that he took his two teenage sons with him on his journey to jihad.
The loss of his sons in airstrikes prompted Tarek to reach out to Sydney-based Khaled. Tarek put him in touch with an Islamic State controller based in Syria who would take operational command of the attack, sourcing the explosives, transporting them to Sydney and, finally, guiding Khaled and Mahmoud through making the bomb.
On July 26 — 11 days after Khaled packed the bomb into his brother’s bag then removed it at the last minute — Australian intelligence agencies received comprehensive information that Islamic State had attempted to smuggle a bomb onto a passenger aircraft. It triggered one of the largest counter-terrorism investigations undertaken in Australia, one that culminated in the arrests of Khaled and Mahmoud.
At first police refused to believe Amer was ignorant of the plot. Lebanese authorities struggled to accept even hardened jihadists would martyr a brother.
But as Operation Silves progressed the absence of physical or electronic evidence connecting Amer to the conspiracy convinced police that he was a dupe. Amer had reportedly been estranged from his brothers. He lived in Sydney but relations with his family had apparently been difficult. He had married and had two daughters, but the marriage had broken down. Amer’s aunt, who identified herself as Amerhi, said when Amer boarded the Etihad flight he was travelling for personal reasons. “What I heard, he was going to Lebanon to get married,’’ she said.
For Amer, it may well have been to start a new life. Sources close to the investigation say he had struggled with personal demons. During his trial in Lebanon he made bizarre outbursts to the court, threatening suicide, weeping uncontrollably and offering differing accounts of his trip overseas. Sources say Amer’s statements shifted wildly.
Amer also lived what his brothers viewed as an errant personal life. Police speculate that the brothers believed martyring Amer in a terrorist attack was his only hope of entering paradise.
