Australian Terror Network Operating for More Than Three Years

Nov. 8, 2005 — -- The terror suspects arrested in Australia early today are part of a homegrown network that has been operating for more than three years and had been working to compile bomb-making components identical to those used in last summer's London subway bombings, ABC News has learned.

After announcing the arrests, Australian authorities said they had foiled a major terror attack. The 17 terror suspects, ethnically Algerian, Morrocan, Pakistani and Lebanese but all Australian residents, thought they were well on their way to completing the purchase of the ingredients needed to make an extremely high-powered, acetone-based, home-brewed explosive and use it against major targets in two cities.

The Australian operation that led to the arrest of the 17 members, in three separate terror cells, was based substantially on telephone and video surveillance and undercover work. The authorities there had a difficult time penetrating part of the operation because the suspects used secure communications, ABC News has learned.

Cell members claim to have trained in Afghan terror camps, and to have received general direction from the operational chiefs of al Qaeda to set up a network in Australia. But other than that, they were on their own. Group members have been positively linked to the Algerian Islamic Group and view themselves as an even more committed splinter group.

Police had been shadowing the members of the three cells for 16 months, watching as they purchased 300 liters of a chemical and waiting for them to pick up additional ingredients on their shopping list -- including heat tablets and peroxide, ABC News has learned.

Heat tablets, peroxide and a strong acid are the chemicals used to make at least two kinds of homemade explosives -- identical to the acetone-based explosives used in the London subway bombings last July.

There are 300,0000 Muslims in Australia, a nation where security services have for six years stated that the country was at a high risk for an attack on the homeland. Of that population, authorities have reported 700 to 800 extremists who endorse violence and 80 whom they believe are immediate candidates for arrest under the new laws. They have also suspected members of this list of being linked to al Qaeda and trained in the terrorist camps.

Whatever their overseas links, the cell members have more in common with the homegrown terrorists who bombed London's subways in July than they do with the 19 hijackers who took down the World Trade Center in what is now viewed as al Qaeda's hallmark attack. That is, they appear to be operating in Australia on their own and if they are to be believed with the loosest of connections to the training camps in Afghanistan or to al Qaeda. Members of the cells claim these links, but no proof other than travel records of any real ties.

The probe, interestingly, began just about two months after the May 2004 trial of Australian al Qaeda leader Jack Roche, a British convert to Islam. Roche videotaped the Israeli Consulate and Israeli Embassy in Australia in preparation for a thwarted truck bomb attack. Australian news organizations reported Monday that the cells appeared to have conducted video and photographic surveillance of possible targets. But this information was developing today as the suspects were interrogated.

Authorities had patiently been following the three cells, hoping to learn more about their targets, finances and supporters, and gather additional information when the cells took delivery of the necessary chemicals, but by very early in the morning, they decided they could not wait any longer.

Just prior to the takedown, with no proof in hand, authorities nonetheless speculated that Al Gore's speech at Randwich Racetrack on Nov. 7 -- a speech to 1,000 prominent members of the Jewish National Fund, was a possible target; although authorities knew full well that the cell members were far from ready for an attack.

In Australia, the arrests and the new terrorism law under which they were made are the subject of heated political charges and strong objections from members of a large Muslim community, which feels the law gives authorities too much latitude to target them.

The law was passed last week just in time for these arrests.

Today in Australia, according to a former senior law enforcement official there, the atmosphere of anxiety even in the days before the arrests had many Aussies avoiding popular beachs like Manly or Bondi -- fearing bombs in the sand.