Al Shabaab link to Holsworthy plot 'overstated'

A leading terrorism expert believes the verdicts in the Holsworthy Barracks case suggest that Australian links to African terrorist group Al Shabaab may have been overstated.

Saney Aweys, Wissam Fattal and Nayef El Sayed were found guilty yesterday in the Victorian Supreme Court of conspiring to prepare for or plan a terrorist attack - a shooting rampage at the Sydney army base.
Their co-accused, Yacqub Khayre and Abdirahman Ahmed, were acquitted.
When the men were arrested in August 2009, much was made of the fact that three of the accused were members of the Somali community.
It was initially alleged that the men were connected to Al Shabaab, an extremist Islamic group.
Just weeks after the men's arrest, the Australian Government officially listed the group as a terrorist organisation.
But Professor Clive Williams, from the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism at Macquarie University, thinks the link to Somalia may have been overstated.
"Because the three people that were found guilty, two of those were of Lebanese origin and only one of them was Somali, whereas the two guys who were acquitted were both Somalis," he said.
"It seemed to me that it is probably a bit more likely that it was a Lebanese-dominated group because the target that they chose was in Sydney which again I think perhaps does tend to push it more towards a Lebanese base group."
Professor Williams doubts that many young Somali-Australians and other local Muslims are being recruited by terrorist groups in Somalia.
"It is very hard for people to get to and from Somalia because you have got to go through either Kenya or Ethiopia and I think that what we will see over the next several years is probably small groups or individuals going to places like maybe Pakistan and Yemen which are perhaps a bit easier to get to and undertaking training and then coming back," he said.
"But of course the home-grown group is the main concern really and they may be people who have never been anywhere and of course the driver for all these people is foreign policies, particularly our involvement at the moment in Afghanistan.
"So as long as we support Israel and the United States, I think that will continue to make us something of a target anyway."
The Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, says the operation that led to the case was a "clear example" of how police and the intelligence community are working together to combat the threat of terrorism.
Professor Williams says that so far authorities seem to have been successful at monitoring the activities of suspect groups.
"It is always going to depend very much on having a good relationship with immigrant communities and hoping that people will be perhaps, concerned about things that they are aware of and calling the hotline or talking to community police officers about their concerns," he said.
The three men convicted of plotting the terrorist attack plot will be sentenced in the New Year.
Professor Williams says police and lawyers will be disappointed with the mixed outcome of the trial, but he says it suggests the jury did a thorough job.
"Always it is going to be problematic when you go to trial on the basis of conspiracy and not actually having done something and so it is always going to be hard for the police and the security agencies to prove their cases when nothing has actually happened," he said.

Allhoryaal
Melbourne - Australia

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