Five Sydney men serving long prison terms for plotting a terrorist attack will remain behind bars after a court dismissed appeals against their convictions and sentences. Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho, Mohamed Ali Elomar, Abdul Rakib Hasan and Mohammed Omar Jamal were among nine men arrested in 2005 under Operation Pendennis, the largest counter-terrorism investigation undertaken in Australia. It uncovered jihadist cells in Sydney and Melbourne amassing guns, ammunition and bomb-making equipment to use in terrorist attacks on home soil. In 2009, the men were found guilty of conspiring to commit a terrorist act and, in 2010, all were given jail terms ranging from 23 to 28 years. Lawyers for the men had argued that the trial judge should have refused to allow the jury to see some pieces of evidence, including certain gruesome imagery and an interview from the ABCs 7:30 program. But a decision summary handed down by the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal said the judge had been right to admit the evidence given the relevance and probative value of the evidence. Any discomfort caused to members of the jury in viewing the gruesome imagery was insufficient to substantiate a danger of unfair prejudice, the summary said. The groups lawyers had also argued the trial judge should have discharged the jury after jurors reported they had been followed in their cars and one juror was followed by a relative of one of the men. But the decision summary said the jury had not lost its objectivity because of the incidents. The court also rejected arguments that the sentences were excessive. This was because the acts [that were] the subject of the conspiracy, whilst not involving a selected target, contemplated endangering the lives of innocent members of the public, the decision summary said. Consideration had to be given to the nature of the terrorist offence, as well as the fact that specific acts of co-conspirators were attributable to other co-accused. Trial judge found inflexible religious conviction behind crime The original trial was one of the longest and most expensive in Australian history, with around 300 witnesses called and 30 days of surveillance footage taken into consideration. Four of the nine men had pleaded guilty, but five denied the charges, arguing the evidence was circumstantial. The 10-month trial was told police raids on the mens homes in western Sydney uncovered rifles, bomb-making instructions and thousands of rounds of ammunition. They also found vast quantities of extremist material that included videos of executions and images glorifying the September 11 hijackers as heroes of the jihadist movement, the court was told. Prosecutors said the group held covert meetings and went on army-style training camps in far western NSW. It was alleged they shared a violent hatred of non-Muslims and an intolerance of Australia. In October 2009, all five men men were found guilty of the offence of conspiring to commit a terrorist act. Justice Anthony Whealy jailed Elomar for 28 years, Hasan for 26 years, Khaled Cheikho for 27 years, Moustafa Cheikho for 26 years and Jamal for 23 years. He said the cell members showed little remorse and few signs of deradicalisation, with many of them wearing their imprisonment like some kind of badge of honour, and were driven by intolerant, inflexible religious conviction. However, he noted the evidence did not establish that any firm conclusion had been reached by the conspirators about the nature or target of their action. At the time, there were protests and scuffles outside the court as some of the mens relatives and supporters clashed with the media. There was intense security outside the Court of Appeal in Parramatta, in western Sydney, for todays decision.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 10:58:47 +0000
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