{"id":22470,"date":"2018-11-20T03:22:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T03:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22470"},"modified":"2018-11-20T03:22:58","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T03:22:58","slug":"australia-police-arrest-three-men-over-terrorist-attack-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22470","title":{"rendered":"Australia police arrest three men over terrorist attack plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Australian police arrested three men they say were preparing a terrorist attack in Melbourne, the country’s second biggest city, less than two weeks after a man was killed in a rampage that police said was inspired by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).<\/p>\n

Australian federal and state police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and other agencies that form part of the country’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team carried out the arrests on Tuesday morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

The three men – Australians of Turkish descent and aged 30, 26 and 21 – will be charged with terrorism-related offences in a Melbourne court later on Tuesday. They will face life in prison if found guilty, police said.<\/p>\n

The three were taken into custody after they allegedly sought to acquire a semi-automatic weapon to carry out an attack.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“We now have sufficient evidence to act in relation to preventing a terrorist attack,” Graham Ashton, chief commissioner of Victoria Police, told reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Police said although the suspects had yet to decide on the site of their planned attack, they believed the act was imminent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crowds were target<\/span><\/h2>\n

“They were certainly looking at a place of mass gathering, where there would be crowds,” Ashton said.\u00a0<\/span>“They were trying to focus on trying to have a place where they could kill as many people as possible.”<\/p>\n

Police said they believed the arrests had neutralised any further threat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

Australia: Police say Melbourne stabbing attack is ‘terrorism<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Australia, an ally of the United States, has deployed troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. <\/span><\/p>\n

The country has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by those returning from fighting in the Middle East or their supporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Police said the three men were known to authorities and their passports had been cancelled earlier this year because of concerns they would travel to a conflict zone overseas.<\/span><\/p>\n

The arrests come less than two weeks after a man set fire to a pick-up truck laden with gas cylinders in the centre of Melbourne and stabbed three people, killing one, before being shot by police.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like that attacker, police said the three men detained on Tuesday had been inspired by ISIL rather than directed by the armed group.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian police arrested three men they say were preparing a terrorist attack in Melbourne, the country’s second biggest city, less than two weeks after a man was killed in a rampage that police said was inspired by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Australian federal and state police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}