Militant networks

By Sally Neighbour
November 18, 2006

IN the hushed confines of a suburban mosque in the north of Melbourne, two men met in 1988. The pair were not well known at the time, but that would soon change.

The Melbourne-based sheik Mohammed Omran headed the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association, now regarded as the most radical Islamic group in Australia. His visitor was the Indonesian preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, future head of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.

Bashir, on his first trip to Australia, needed the blessing of the country's pre-eminent conservative cleric in order to begin building his jemaah or community, which would later become the Australian branch of JI. Omran was willing to oblige.

Their warm handshake in the Preston mosque signified the start of an enduring alliance between their two groups, strengthened over almost two decades by a web of personal and organisational links. This alliance is central to the sprawling network of Islamic militants now under investigation in Australia.

But while Omran has radical views, he has been outspoken against terrorism. On the face of it, the two groups held distinctly different aims. Omran's Ahlus Sunnah group, largely Middle Eastern in origin, existed to promote an austerely literal interpretation of the Koran. Bashir's group comprised mostly Indonesians dedicated to securing an Islamic state in their homeland.

But the two men and their followers shared a common world view. They were adherents of the Salafi school of Islam, which holds that the faith must be practised just as it was in the days of the prophet Mohammed. They also believed that the Koran allows Muslims to fight if their religion is under threat.

Omran was well-connected in international Salafist circles. A Jordanian-born migrant to Australia, his friends included the British-based al-Qa'ida luminary Abu Qatada, whom Omran hosted in Australia in 1994. Interviews with Osama bin Laden and Abu Qatada were among the items featured in the online magazine Nida'ul Islam (Call to Islam), published by Omran's acolytes in the Islamic Youth Movement and read widely in Australia, Europe and the Middle East. Bashir also needed a forum to spread his teachings in Australia.

And Nida'ul Islam was happy to provide one, publishing a series of speeches and essays by Bashir and his JI co-founder Abdullah Sungkar.

The Indonesian twin brothers appointed by the JI chiefs to run their new branch in Australia were welcomed into the Ahlus Sunnah group's fold. Abdul Rahim and Abdul Rahman Ayub regularly attended its prayer room in Haldon Street at Lakemba in Sydney and encouraged their followers to do likewise. Abdul Rahim was at the time married to the Australian woman Rabiyah Hutchison, with whom he had a daughter and two sons, Mohammed and Abdullah, who are under arrest in Yemen, accused of plotting with al-Qa'ida figures to import arms into Somalia. A powerful and headstrong personality, Hutchison became the matriarch of the radical Islamist community in Australia. She would later travel to Afghanistan, where she married a member of al-Qa'ida's leadership council, Mustafa Hamid, also known as Abu al-Walid al-Masri.

The ties between the two groups were cemented in 1999 with the marriage of Hutchison's eldest daughter Rahmah (from an earlier marriage in Indonesia) to Sydney man Khalid Cheikho, another regular at the Haldon Street prayer room. Cheikho is awaiting trial on charges of preparing for a terrorist act, following his arrest in Sydney last year under ASIO's Operation Pendennis.

The JI connection to Ahlus Sunnah was further evidenced when Omran travelled to Indonesia, believed to be in 2001. According to an account provided by one of his followers to the Australian Federal Police, the purpose of Omran's journey was "to visit Abu Bakar Bashir".

Omran denies that he travelled to Indonesia expressly to visit Bashir, claiming he went there on a lecture tour to give sermons in mosques and universities, and that he met up with Bashir in Jakarta in his spare time. Omran's Sydney lieutenant Abdul Salam Zoud, who was named by French investigators in 2004 as an Australian recruiter for the jihad, was also well acquainted with Bashir.

Zoud and Bashir met in Malaysia in early 2000, when Zoud was leading a party of Australian pilgrims home from the annual haj to Mecca. The party, which included Melbourne man Jack Thomas, stopped over in Kuala Lumpur, where they were greeted by Bashir. He was accompanied by Australian JI member Jack Roche, who later described the encounter to the AFP. Roche had been seconded by JI's operations chief Hambali and was on his way to Afghanistan to meet the al-Qa'ida leadership to plan an attack in Australia. Roche was subsequently convicted and sentenced to nine years in jail for plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy in Canberra. As the most senior figure in the Australian jihadist network, Omran was briefed by JI's local leaders on Roche's plot. The Ayub brothers were opposed to Hambali and Roche conducting an al-Qa'ida operation in Australia without consulting them. So they went to Omran to seek his advice.

Omran argued strongly that Roche must be stopped. The Ayub twins relayed his advice back to Bashir in Indonesia by letter, and Bashir later instructed Roche to abandon his plans.

Omran, with some justification, has since claimed credit for having averted Roche's bombing. He also claimed to have alerted the authorities to the plot. However, Australian officials deny that he did so. ASIO and the AFP remained oblivious to Roche's activities until after the Bali bombings in 2002.

Evidence in another terrorism case suggests that despite his reservations about the JI organisation, Omran acted as a conduit to Bashir for his followers in Australia. The material supporting this emerged in the trial of Thomas, who was found guilty of receiving funds from al-Qa'ida, but had his conviction overturned on appeal after it was found that his interview with the AFP in Pakistan was obtained under duress.

Like many of Omran's followers, Thomas refers to the cleric as Abu Ayman, meaning "father of Ayman".

Thomas told the AFP that before he left for Afghanistan he sought "Abu Bakar Bashir's advice through Abu Ayman" about whether he should go or not. The reply that came back from Bashir via Omran was: "If I want to go, OK, and if I want to stay, OK. I shouldn't feel forced to go to Afghanistan."

Omran himself counselled Thomas against making the journey. He saw Thomas as a hothead who would likely get himself into trouble. But Thomas ignored his advice. Before leaving Australia in March 2001, Thomas was briefed by another Sydney follower of the Ahlus Sunnah group, who had recently returned from Afghanistan and had been questioned en route by Australian police.

Thomas was warned to take care for his personal safety and to "concentrate on the security of the sheik". He assumed this was a reference to Omran. Thomas told the AFP that because of Omran's own contacts with people linked to al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan, Omran's "security was in jeopardy".

Thomas was one of three Australians who travelled to Afghanistan in early 2001 for training in al-Qa'ida's Camp Faruq. All three regularly attended Omran's Michael St mosque in Brunswick and their travel was arranged by a fellow Ahlus Sunnah follower at the mosque.

By the time Thomas arrived in Afghanistan, Hutchison had made her home in Kabul, settling with her sons Mohammed and Abdullah in one of three houses in a small residential compound.

One of her neighbours in the compound was a Taliban commander and al-Qa'ida intermediary known as Abu Qatada (though not the same Abu Qatada referred to above). He was a Kenyan who was wanted over the al-Qa'ida bombings of two US embassies in Africa in 1998.

Hutchison introduced Thomas to this man, who grilled the Melburnian before sending him to the tatziri (beginners) course in Camp Faruq.

In Camp Faruq, Thomas was joined by two other Australians he knew from the Ahlus Sunnah mosque in Melbourne. One of them was a 20-year-old former Canberran convert to Islam named Ahmad Kalek. The other was another convert, Melburnian Shane Kent.

Kalek later told the AFP of how they met bin Laden in Afghanistan. He recalled: "Our group had a short conversation with Osama bin Laden during which he asked who we were and where we were from. He also asked how the Muslims in Australia were going."

Kalek, who is also known as Abu Jihad, was later detained in Egypt and held in a Cairo prison for several months, before being sent home to Australia. He has not been charged but remains a person of interest to the Australian authorities.

Kent was one of 22 men arrested in Melbourne and Sydney last year during Operation Pendennis, and was recently committed to stand trial on charges that include membership of a terrorist organisation and providing support to al-Qa'ida.

Sally Neighbour is a reporter for ABC television's Four Corners.

Source: The Australian

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