Extremist shot by police driven to kill by Islamic State

ABDUL Numan Haider’s jihad ended in a carpark, a soldier for a distant war getting closer to home.

Numan Ahmed Haider - also known as Abdul Newman was shot dead after stabbing two police officers in Melbourne. Numin Haider was part of Muslim extremists Al Furqan “brainwashing” young Muslims as they Mosque jumped. Exclusive picture

THE day after the Islamic State terror group urged its followers to kill Australians “in any manner”, Melbourne teenager Abdul Numan Haider packed the three things he knew he would need for his appointment with the police.

He grabbed a large knife and a small knife from his home in suburban southeast Melbourne. He also folded his cherished black and white Islamic State flag so that it fitted neatly into his pocket.

The 18-year-old trainee electrician then slipped behind the wheel of his silver sedan and drove to his death.

Perhaps Haider, an Australian of Afghan heritage, thought he could move fast enough to kill the two policemen before they could kill him. Or perhaps he knew this was a suicide mission.

Either way, only seconds after he arrived at the Endeavour Hills police station for a meeting with two counter-terrorism police, Haider’s war on behalf of Islamic State was over, his lifeless body lying near the two seriously injured policemen.

Barely a fortnight after security agencies raised Australia’s alert level to “high”, the nation is confronting its first terror-related ­attack on home soil.

Haider’s story, like that of Sydney man Omarjan Azari, who was arrested last week for an alleged plot to behead an Australian, is a tale of an impressionable young Australian Muslim who became so entranced by the murderous ideology of Islamic State that he saw himself as an Islamic State soldier in a foreign land. Although Haider was not thought to harbour radical views as a student at the Lyndale Secondary College in Dandenong North, that changed when he befriended a small group of hardline Muslims at the al-Furqan Islamic centre in Springvale.

IN DEPTH Terror hits home

This group, thought to number about 30, is led by a radical self-styled sheik called Harun Mehicevic, also known as Abu Talha, and is known to authorities for its radical Salafist interpretation of Islam, its open hostility to the West and its support for radical ­jihadist causes.

“He was very close to the brothers at that (al-Furqan) centre,” a friend of Haider, Maryam Taylor Muhammad, told The Australian last night. “They were devastated when they heard what happened to him yesterday. They came here (to the centre) and were very upset.”

Two years ago, police raids on 11 homes connected with the al-­Furqan centre resulted in the ­arrest of Adnan Karabegovic on charges of possessing the banned al-Qa’ida magazine Inspire, including an edition that uses a picture of the Sydney Opera House in a section on bomb-making.

Police raided the centre after an embarrassing bungle when an ASIO informer inside the group lost his mobile phone and it was picked up by a member of the centre, who found 60 texts to an ASIO agent known only as “Jay”.

“By the will of Allah the Almighty The Best of Plotters we ­expose a spy amongst us — working for ASIO,” group member Yasin Rizvic thundered on Facebook at the time.

Haider spent a lot of time at this centre, but he also prayed regularly under the giant glass chandelier in the cavernous prayer hall at the nearby Hallam mosque, which espouses a mainstream interpretation of Islam.

According to a work history he published on the internet, Haider had begun training as an electrician at the Chisolm Institute of TAFE in Dandenong and previously had worked packing shelves at a Coles supermarket, where says he learned “working as a team and following constant ­instructions with speed and accuracy”. However, earlier this year Haider is believed to have attended lectures at the al-Furqan centre by radical Perth-born cleric Junaid Thorne. Thorne, whose brother was jailed for terrorism-related offences in Saudi Arabia, sat in front of an Islamic State flag and encouraged Haider, among others, to show their “might” against disbelievers. Thorne issued a long statement last night accusing police of “murdering in cold blood” a “normal good practising young Muslim youth”.

By the middle of this year, Haider had become entranced by the murderous advance of Islamic State in Iraq and the growing number of Australians seeking to go overseas to fight.

On July 25, at the Fountaingate shopping centre in Narre Warren in southeast Melbourne, police were called to a disturbance involving a group of young Muslim men who were loudly debating the notion of jihadism and martyrdom. Earlier that week it had been reported that Melbourne man Adam Dahman, who was the same age as Haider, had become Australia’s first suicide bomber after he detonated a belt bomb in a marketplace near Baghdad, killing five people.

Police attended the disturbance and took note of Haider. Shortly afterwards security agencies, including ASIO, began to monitor the teenager more closely, noting that his views had become more aggressive and extremist.

His friend Maryam denies that Haider harboured radical views. “He was not extreme. He was very well liked in our community and went out of his way to help his brothers,” she said.

She admitted Haider talked about the raids and also about the conflict in Syria, but said: “Everyone in our community talks about this stuff. We all get passionate about our brothers and sisters getting killed.”

Several weeks ago authorities learned that Haider was planning to leave Australia to become a jihadist soldier with Islamic State.

On the eve of the large terror raids in Sydney and Queensland last week, ASIO cancelled his passport.

The news that Islamic State supporters in Sydney had been targeted in the raids appeared to send Haider into a rage. The following day, last Friday, he walked through the Dandenong Mall and the Dandenong Plaza Shopping Centre waving a giant Islamic State flag. Police on a routine patrol stopped and questioned him. Haider made no threats and withdrew peacefully.

On Facebook Haider posted a photo of himself in military fatigues holding an Islamic State flag next to a statement which said: “Let’s not put the focus on other things. The main message I’m sending with these statuses and photos is to the dogs of the Australian Federal Police and ASIO who are declaring war on Islam and Muslims.”

This week, Victoria’s Joint Counter-Terrorism Taskforce contacted Haider and requested a meeting to discuss his views and his recent activity.

In a statement last night, Thorne, the radical preacher who lectured Haider, claimed that police visited Haider’s house shortly before their fateful meeting but he was not home so they searched his room. “Upon hearing this the young boy got mad,” Thorne said. Police sources dispute Thorne’s account, confirming that police did visit the house, but only for the purpose of talking with him, not to conduct a search.

Security agencies believe the motivation for the attempted murder of the two policemen was the exhortation by the terror group the previous day to kill an Australian, even down to the choice of the murder weapon.

“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European … or Australian … then rely upon Allah and kill him in any manner or way however it may be,” Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani said in a call to arms on Monday that received global coverage.

“Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict,” he said, adding that if you are “not able to find an IED (improvised explosive device) or bullet” then find a knife to “slaughter” the disbeliever.

A day after that statement, Haider arrived at the Endeavour Hills police station at about 7.40pm on Tuesday for his prearranged meeting with a counter-terror officer from the Victoria Police and from the AFP.

They met in the car park in front of the station because Haider had told them he did not want to meet inside the station. Neither officer was expecting violence.

The teenager stepped out of his car, one of the officers gestured to shake his hand and Haider then pulled out his knife, frantically trying to stab both men. Witnesses claim Haider was shouting abuse about Tony Abbott and the government when one of the officers fired a single shot, killing him, but not before sustaining serious injuries themselves for which they remain in hospital.

So did Haider, who says he learned to “follow instructions with speed and accuracy” as a supermarket shelf-packer in suburban Melbourne, go to his death on the instructions of Islamic State? The early evidence suggests he did, proving another chilling reminder that this distant terror group has never been closer to home.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: MARK SCHLIEBS