Sept 30 2001 – ASIO agents investigating “sympathy links” to the US terrorist attacks have conducted a series of home raids in Sydney’s south-west.
And yesterday, in an exclusive interview with The Sun-Herald, a mother of two claimed she was held face down at gunpoint and asked about a terror group linked to Osama bin Laden.
“Now we have to move,” the convert to Islam claimed after the raid. “Our neighbours are all scared that we are terrorists and they are angry at us. Society has forced us to live in a cage.”
Her assertions over firearms were denied by the authorities.
Backed by 70 federal and NSW police, operatives from ASIO executed warrants on at least five houses in the city’s Arabic belt this week, seizing passports, financial records and other documents.
Heavily armed members of the NSW State Protection Group were placed on emergency standby throughout the tense operation.
One address targeted is believed to be that of a Middle Eastern Australian employed as a baggage handler at Sydney airport.
Others scrutinised are thought to belong to particular Islamic congregations described by mainstream Muslim clerics as “isolationist”.
According to Federal Government sources, others identified as official persons of interest have also been selectively interviewed over the past week about their backgrounds, and business and personal affairs.
The top-level investigation is the first proof that the US’s global anti-terrorist campaign has reached Australian shores.
The Sun-Herald observed one of the raids on Thursday morning, when abpout 20 federal and State officers searched a home unit in Lakemba, interviewing those inside for more than two hours. A mother of two young children who was at home at the time later claimed police turned the residence “upside down” and interrogated her in front of her family.
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said: “They actually thought we were part of this terrorist group [linked to the American attacks].
“They told me to get on the floor and pointed a gun in my face.”
The allegation has been categorically rejected by senior government staff.
“There is no way a firearm was used and there is no way anyone was forced to the ground,” one said. The same source told The Sun-Herald: “There is nothing to suggest that there is a specific threat to Australia at the moment.
“However, there is a current heightened state of security. Federal and State police have … conducted a range of interviews and a number of enter-and-search warrants.
“They have been conducted under the ASIO Act and with the approval of the Attorney-General [Daryl Williams].”
According to the woman whose unit was searched at Lakemba, ASIO seemed intent on probing the fact that she had travelled to Pakistan within the past 12 months.
“They took a video and they took from our house magazines because we have subscription magazines about Islam and what is happening in the world, as well as our bank account details,” she said.
Of particular note, they seemed interested in a journal article quoting from a book thought to have been written by Osama bin Laden titled Declaration Of War, the woman said.
“Why this was so, I don’t know. The book itself is available from any bookshop.”
The woman said her husband visited Mecca last June, then decided to go to Pakistan before returning home.
“Before we were married a year ago, he rang me and asked me to go to Pakistan with him because he thought it might be a good place to live,” she said.
“He asked me, `Come with me and we’ll live there’ and I said `No way’. I didn’t want to just pack up and leave.
“He then went by himself and we agreed that if we were still in love when he got back, we would get married.”
When her husband returned to Sydney he had been stopped by police and interviewed about the trip, the woman said.
“They asked him if he attended any [military] training camps or if he was training there,” she said.
The woman said both she and her husband were converts to Islam and had both been born in Australia.
“But now we have to move. Our neighbours are all scared that we are terrorists and they are angry at us. Society has forced us to live in a cage.
“ASIO said to me they will be back and that they are watching us.
“When this happened to me my husband told me to go to our mosque for the rest of the day. Today I have a friend staying with me.”
The couple’s passports have also been confiscated.
Both worship at one of Lakemba’s two Mosala Muslim prayer groups. “The police ask us whether we have anything to do with funding at Mosala,” the woman said.
“We have been told that they are watching this too and that others who go there have been questioned.”
So far no arrests have been made in relation to the raids.
“This has not been in response to a specific threat or evidence of any link between people in Australia and what took place in the US,” Federal Government sources said.
“Specific individuals and groups are being examined, not the broader communities they come from.”
BY THE CLOCK
Thursday, September 27
7am: Up to 70 detectives, federal agents and ASIO operatives assemble at Campsie police station. Only those NSW officers with intimate “local knowledge” are selected for the task.
8.30am: Two unmarked cars head towards Campsie shops before looping almost due west. Several addresses close to the Lakemba mosque are later visited by police.
8.40am: The main convoy three unmarked sedans and a minivan moves off south-west then splinters before regrouping north of Canterbury Road, on the southern fringe of Lakemba.
8.50am: Arriving at the target address, the convoy is met by a second people-mover carrying armed federal agents and the raid begins.
11.30am: About 20 officers emerge from the flat, some carrying bags. One vehicle returns directly to AFP headquarters in Sydney. The others head back in the direction of Campsie.