The al-Shabab terrorist group responsible for the Westgate shopping mall massacre in Nairobi has links with home-grown Australian terrorists. In August 2009, Australian security agencies foiled an al-Shabab associated plot to attack Holsworthy Army Barracks in Sydney. Codenamed Operation Neath, the counterterrorism operation disrupted the mass-shooting plot in its early stages. Five men were charged, and three—Wissam Fattal (pictured), Saney Edow Aweys and Nayef el-Sayed—were convicted of planning to attack the barracks. The men had sought weapons, dispatched others for training, conducted reconnaissance of Holsworthy Barracks and asked senior al-Shabab religious figures in Somalia for permission to attack Australian targets. See: Multiculturalism failure: Australian jihadists jailed Saney Aweys, the key link to al-Shabab, was from a Somali background; Wissam Fattal and Nayef el-Sayed were of Lebanese descent. Prior to the Nairobi teror attack, the Holsworthy Barracks incident marks one of the few al-Shabab associated plots in the West, yet it…
terrorists
In December 2010 a jury found Wissam Fattal, Nayef El Sayed, and Saney Aweys, guilty of terrorism offences after a six-week trial in the Victorian Supreme Court. Wissam Fattal The three men were part of an Islamic terrorist cell that planned to enter the Holsworthy army barracks in Sydney, armed with military weapons and shoot as many people as possible before they were killed or ran out of ammunition. The men, who had all met at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne’s north, were arrested in August 2009 after undercover police infiltrated the group. Justice King said Fattal was the most dogmatic and outspoken, in terms of religious fervour, of the three. “All of you believe in the principle of martyrdom. All of you believe it is your obligation to oppose and deal with those you describe as infidels, being persons who are not of the Muslim faith or those of…