As a new year begins we should look at where we are with the struggle against Jihadi terrorism.
Retrospectively, we can now see a pattern in the role of Pakistani based Jihadists and new potential threats to Australia.
Three Australians, Gareth McEvoy, Nathan Verity, and Craig Senger, were murdered in Jakarta on July 17 by al-Qaeda’s South East Asian franchise, Jemaah Islamiyah.
These attacks led the Indonesian authorities to track down, and kill, JI chief bomb expert Noordin Top.
One might have thought because of geographic proximity Indonesia and Jemaah Islamiyah would be the principal source of Jihadi danger. However in my opinion, the Mumbai attacks have a striking importance in the origin of terrorist threats to Australia, as many of the convictions for attempted terrorist attacks on Australia relate to the Pakistani Jihadi group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which was responsible for that attack.
In Mumbai, in November 2008, a group of ten terrorists, members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, travelled by boat from Karachi to Mumbai. In a series of co-ordinated attacks across the city, they killed 166 civilians and security personnel. Many of those killed were Indian hotel and restaurant workers, including some Muslims. Among the dead were 29 foreign visitors. They included two Australians, Brett Taylor and Douglas Markell.
Lashkar-e-Taiba’s terrorists made a point of attacking Jewish targets. There are few Jews in Mumbai, but the terrorists gave Mumbai’s Chabad House, a Jewish outreach centre, special attention. They tortured and murdered Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivkah Holtzberg, and six Jewish tourists.
The only attacker captured alive, 21-year-old Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, has confirmed that he was a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, recruited when he was 19 and trained a camp in Pakistani Kashmir by former Pakistani Army officers. The camp was under the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistani intelligence service. The ISI is seemingly not accountable to the Pakistani government and has a long record of promoting anti-India terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, who have morphed into a wider threat.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is the Pakistani arm of the loose international network of Jihadi terrorist groups. They cooperate ideologically and operationally with al-Qaeda along with, Jamaah Islamiya in Indonesia, Al Shabab in Somalia and Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen. Apparently, reconnaissance work in Mumbai for last year’s attack, was done by the Pakistan-born American, David Headley (originally Daood Gilani)
He stayed in the Mumbai hotels which were the main targets of the attack. Posing as a Jew, he enjoyed the hospitality of the Mumbai Chabad House. Headley was arrested in Chicago in early October where information subsequently gained from Headley (Gilani), led to the arrest of two Lieutenant Colonels and a retired Major in the Pakistani armed services.
So far we have been spared a terrorist attack on Australian soil. But this is not something we can take for granted. Jihadi groups, particularly the Pakistani based LeT, have singled out Australia for attack. Our land-sea barrier and the vigilance of our security forces have seen these plans have been detected in time and their attacks thwarted.
There are several links, between Lashkar-e-Taiba and Australia. David Hicks trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir, according to his own testimony. Although many seem sympathetic to Hicks because of his incarceration in Guantanamo Bay, he told a fellow detainee of his desire to “go back to Australia and rob and kill Jews” and “crash a plane into a building.” Hicks has since served out his sentence, and there is no evidence of an ongoing relationship with LeT.
Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-Australian, was also trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir, along with the French LeT sleeper, Willie Brigitte. Together they planned attacks on the national electricity supply system and defence installations in Sydney. Lodhi was convicted by the NSW Supreme Court in 2006 and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, with a 15 year non-parole period. Brigitte sits in a French jail.
Another person has been charged in Australia with connections to Lashkar-e-Taiba, but those charges were dropped after a court found prosecution evidence to be inadmissible. Most recently on October 15 last year, 5 men were convicted in Parramatta court on terrorism charges. Again, there was a Lashkar-e-Taiba connection, as one of those convicted trained at a LeT camp in Pakistan.
When our current anti-terrorism laws were introduced in 2004 and 2005, I and other Labor members were criticised for supporting them. I said then that I thought these laws were an unfortunate necessity. In the wake of 9/11 and the Bali bombings we could no longer assume that Australia was immune from the threat of Islamist terrorism.
Of course we have had other recent terror convictions of local would-be Jihadists, like the Benbrika and the Al Shabab linked groups in Melbourne. But Lashkar-e-Taiba seems to have special interest in Australia, training individuals arrested and subsequently convicted by our courts.
The alleged connection of the Pakistani intelligence service the ISI - involving Headley’s link to the Pakistani officers pose a new dilemma for Australia. Part of the Pakistani state apparatus is connected with the terrorist group that has directly threatened Australia and murdered Australians. Australia has been lucky so far, but the good work of our security agencies alone may not protect us. Only continued vigilance, and the laws to make that vigilance effective, will do that.
We also need to be blunt with the Pakistanis - enough is enough.
- Michael Danby is the Member for Melbourne Ports and Chair of the Sub-committee on Foreign Affairs (JCFDAT).
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