Did Somalia’s al-Shabaab Plan to Attack the Australian Military?
Halkaan ka akhri Operation Neath, one of the largest counterterrorism operations in Australian history, culminated in a series of early morning raids in Melbourne on August 4. The four men arrested were all Australian citizens of Lebanese or Somali descent and apparently part of a larger group of 18 individuals under observation by police (The Australian, August 4). In a press conference on the day of the arrests, police laid out their central charge that the men were “planning to carry out a suicide terrorist attack” on an Australian military base using “automatic weapons” in “a sustained attack on military personnel until they themselves were killed.” According to police, some individuals in the plot had been to and presumably trained in Somalia, and had sought a “fatwa” (religious ruling) that would authorize them to carry out attacks in Australia. [1] Four men (Saney Aweys, 26, of North Carlton; Yacqub Khayre, 22, of Meadow Heights; Nayef El Sayed, 25, of Glenroy; and Abdirahman Ah
