Football crowds targets in terror plot, court told

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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23209931-2862,00.html

Accused of leading a terror group: Abdul Nacer Benbrika


Football crowds targets in terror plot, court told

Katie Bice and Norrie Ross

February 14, 2008 12:00am

A HOME-GROWN Muslim terror group bent on violent jihad aimed to bomb football grounds and train stations to inflict maximum loss of life, a jury heard yesterday.

The group's self-styled sheik said an attack needed to kill 1000 people, so the Government would "sit up and take notice", the Supreme Court was told.

"They were intending something big," prosecutor Richard Maidment, SC, told jurors in his opening address, "to cause maximum damage. To cause the death of 1000 . . . by use of a bomb."

He said the group's leader, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 47, gave the others permission to kill women, children and the elderly.

He believed it was permissible to kill those who didn't believe in Allah or violent jihad, Mr Maidment said.

"They should feel comfortable about the killing of innocent citizens. Their blood and money is fair game," Mr Maidment said.

Mr Benbrika and 11 other men have pleaded not guilty to various charges, including being a member of a terrorist organisation.

The jury was told the Crown case was captured in the men's words during 482 secretly recorded conversations.

Mr Maidment said the group never got to the point of planning a specific target, but their intention was to foster or prepare an attack, preferably in Australia. Suspicions that they were under surveillance by police and ASIO had played a role in slowing their progress.

He said Mr Benbrika had inquired about getting access to 500kg of ammonium nitrate, and had attended a demonstration of its explosive power.

Mr Maidment said although Mr Benbrika was the director, others were "no shrinking violets". Videos found in the possession of some showed beheadings and US soldiers in Iraq being shot by snipers.


Terror caseViolent jihad: Jury told of bomb demo
Roger Franklin: Real life drama a hard slog
Terror trial: The accused and the charges

 

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Real life drama a hard slog - 'Birth of Movies in Court Rooms

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23210110-2862,00.html

Prosecutor Richard Maidment: few dabs of colour in his opening


Real life drama a hard slog

Roger Franklin

February 14, 2008 12:00am


SPEND a day sitting in on any trial - especially the one that began yesterday in Room 3.3 at the County Court - and what you soon realise is just how much TV's scriptwriters have to answer for.

They make it all so easy on the box, so quick and absolutely cut and dried, this business of seeing justice done.

Real life is different, and the trial before Justice Bernard Bongiorno of 12 Muslim men accused of, among other things, fostering an attack involving chemicals or weapons couldn't draw a more definite line between courtroom fantasy and the hard, slow slog of the legal system as it really is.

If a scriptwriter had been supervising the dialogue, the stuff that prosecutor Richard Maidment, SC, laid out when opening the batting for his side would have been edge-of-the-seat engrossing.

The defendants talked longingly of an attack that would kill 1000 of their countrymen, the prosecutor told the court, adding that they believed non-Muslims could be killed without pain of sin before Allah because "their blood and money is fair game".

Same with the way the defendants allegedly raised money to finance the group, chopping stolen cars for parts and running credit card frauds with numbers passed on by "sympathetic taxi drivers and the like".

Then there was what Maidment described as their reaction to the London bombings, comments picked up by one of the many bugs and phone taps that monitored the group's conversations and alleged planning sessions.

"Terrible," one member of the group is alleged to have said when informed that 52 people had been blown to pieces. "It should have been much higher!"

There was cloak and dagger stuff, too, centring on an undercover agent who penetrated the alleged terror cell, only to be frozen out when members began to suspect him.

Before then, according to Maidment, "Security Intelligence Officer 39" took the alleged leader, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, to "a remote place" where he detonated a small demonstration charge crafted from fertiliser and fuel oil.

The blast was witnessed and videotaped by a squad of agents "hiding behind trees", which in the hands of a script doctor might have added an element of light relief to the alleged litany of crimes encompassed by the dozen charges against the defendants.

But by that stage, late in the afternoon, Maidment had been on his feet since 10.45am and hours of his grey, British-accented monotone had immunised the packed courtroom against any possibility of excitement.

Rather than the full picture, which will come when his opening statement finally ends and witnesses are called, it was little dabs of colour that Maidment worked with a light brush stroke of detail here, a tantalising quote from a wiretap there.

But to spectators hoping for a day of entertainment, even those teasers of the evidence were a disappointment, buried among droning explanations of the charges and, repeatedly throughout the day, very many definitions of Arabic terms that will figure in the days and months to come.

Meanwhile, the defence team sat silent and waited its turn while the defendants, surrounded by an 11-strong contingent of guards, showed little emotion.

The shape of the case to come being detailed in Room 3.3 is precisely the sort of stuff Hollywood could work with.

Give any director 60 minutes, minus time for ads, and of course he would have the whole thing wrapped up, fast and tight and seamless.

But then again, and unlike real life, on movie sets the drama is make-believe.