Counter-terror raids shatter Melbourne’s suburban peace

Counter terror raids on homes that resulted in the arrest of three men followed a familiar pattern — bangs, broken glass, and cries.

Armagan Eriklioglu, 51, at his Campbellfield home after he was bundled to the ground and had a rifle pointed at his head during the arrests of his two sons early yesterday. Picture: David Geraghty

It was 3.20am when special oper­­ations police dropped in to 40 Gentles Avenue.

First came a bang as loud as a shotgun, the crash of metal and glass and then a scream so loud it woke the dogs in the Campbellfield street.

As the wailing continued, Arma­gan Eriklioglu, 51, was thrown to the floor and tied up, face down, with his hands behind his back.

Counter-terror raids are never going to be pleasant.

A high-powered weapon was pointed at his head and, he said, another at his screaming wife, as the masked guests continued deeper into his house.

His elderly mother and 26-year-old son, Samed, were in the sleepout. It, too, copped the full force of Operation Donabate; doors smashed, rooms rendered safe. Two copies of the Koran were later seized, plus a computer.

Next door, an agitated neighbour of 20 years stumbled on two masked police in his backyard, guns ready, covered in body ­armour like a couple of turtles.

The suburb, which for decades lived in the shadow of the Ford ­factory, was surrounded.

At the same time, maybe 1km away as the crow flies, police gave Mr Eriklioglu’s eldest son, Ertunc, 30, a visit and the same treatment, no great surprise given the gravity of the charges.

Ertunc Eriklioglu, the father of two girls, one a baby, was asleep with his wife in the front room by a cot when the glass was smashed and scattered over the flat, maybe 10m from the garage his neighbour said he used as a makeshift mosque.

Ertunc Eriklioglu arrived in court with a bruised face and what looked like blood on his pants.

For a solid half an hour, in two agitated shifts yesterday, Armagan Eriklioglu tried to articulate his concerns about the raids and his sons’ arrests.

Heavily armed officers line Gentles Avenue after the raids. Picture: David Geraghty

“It’s all lies,’’ he said.

“They are very quiet, they are not aggressive.’’

In the minutes before Samed was taken away, tied up, Armagan sought an assurance from his son that there was nothing to fear.

“They’ve got no weapons, they can’t find anything. We’ve got no weapons at all.’’

His boys didn’t like Islamic State, he insisted.

“ISIS has been created by the USA,’’ he said. “He (Samed) always said that the US built that ISIS up, they are the ones who made it up.”

While the facts of the alle­gations will be determined by the courts, yesterday’s raids have followed an increasingly familiar pattern. They tend to happen in Melbourne’s outer north, often near mosques, in streets that are generally deeply suburban, housing stock 30 to 50 years old and in what may now be called the city’s pre-Christmas terror season.

Gentles Avenue had never seen anything quite like it. For the neighbours, the raids were a great disappointment.

“I was thinking how lucky we are. No crime. No nothing,’’ said neighbour of six years Imtiaz Syed.

A neighbour of 20 years said the Eriklioglu family had been model citizens, the two sons sometimes going into the city to feed the homeless.

The father, a tradesman, and the broader family prayed, sometimes attending local mosques, but their lives were like their brick-veneer home. Clean, he said.

A woman and child look on as police conduct a doorknock in the neighbourhood. Picture: Alex Coppel

Two hours earlier in the city, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton was not so sure. “They (the three accused) were looking at a place of mass gathering. There was a view towards a crowded place, a place where maximum people would be attending, to be able to kill, we ­allege, a maximum amount of ­people as possible,’’ he said.

The youngest brother, Samed, had recently tried to travel to Turkey to marry, his father said, adding that the family had travelled to Turkey and Saudi Arabia two years ago.

It is 13km to Greenvale, near Melbourne Airport, where 21-year-old Hanifi Halis, the brothers’ co-accused, was arrested.

John Esho, 25, didn’t mix with Mr Halis but told The Australian he noticed his appearance changing in the past six months.

“Six months ago he was like a normal guy, but then he changed. He grew a beard, changed his clothes. He looks like he spent a lot of time at the mosque,” Mr Esho said. “He even sold his car. I used to see him driving a BMW but it’s gone.”

When the police dropped in to 82 Lemonwood Drive, they continued their habit of waking the neighbours in the darkest hours before dawn.

At nearby Coolaroo, four police cars and vans guarded a yellow-brick home where a possible connection to the accused men lives with his young wife, children and mother.

Detectives emerged from the home just before 1pm, carrying paper bags of evidence and what appeared to be cases of equipment, while a baby inside the home could be heard crying.

A man inside the home told The Australian he did not know why the police had stormed his house at 9am. The police entry was much less aggressive.

“They had a search warrant, that is all,” he said.

“And I just need to look after my family — I’ve got young children here and a family and I have a heart problem as well, so that’s what I’m taking care of.’’

Police, meanwhile, had called in the glaziers to fix the windows and glass doors that had been ­broken at other addresses as they secured the homes holding the ­alleged terrorists.

In at least two cases, the tradesmen waited patiently outside while police carried away the evidence secured during the raids.

Police are not expected to pay for the new glass.