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December 23, 2007
Australia: Muslim Terror Plotter's Appeal Rejected
The man at left is Pakistani-born architect Faheem Khalid Lodhi, who lived in Punchbowl, Sydney. On June 19, 2006 he was found guilty on three terrorism counts. He was the first person to be convicted under Australia's new terrorism laws, and the first to be convicted of planning a terrorist attack.
He was found guilty of gathering maps of Sydney's power grid, acting in preparation for a terrorist act by gathering information about bomb-makingchemicals and and possessing documents with information about how to manufacture poisons. He had also written a 15-page terror manual in Urdu, which contained instructions for making home-made bombs and poisons. He had DVDs of jihad and terror training, and was convicted of buying two maps of Sydney's electricity grid with the intention of using them to plan terror attacks. Lodhi had planned to commit these attacks in October 2003.
Lodhi had trained with the Pakistan-based terror organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba (Lashkar-e-Toiba, or LeT) with a French national called Willy Brigitte. This man had been deported from Australia in 2003, on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda. French intelligence had been tracking Brigitte since 1999. They contacted Australian authorities on 3 November, 2003, to say that he planned a high-level terror act, and Brigitte, who had entered Australia on a tourist visa in May that year, was deported. Brigitte was given a 9 year jail sentence by a court in Paris on March 15 this year for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."
His sentencing was delayed, but in August 2006 he was given a jail term of twenty years, 15 of which must be spent in prison before he becomes eligible for parole.
Now, news from AFP, ABC, the Age, the Australian, News.com.au and Sydney Morning Herald states that 37-year old Lodhi's conviction has been upheld by New South Wales Court of Appeal on Thursday, December 20.
Lodhi's lawyers claimed that the laws against terror had removed judges' powers to control trials and were thus unconstitutional. Chief Justice Jim Spiegelman responded: "Tilting the balance does not impinge upon the integrity of the process by which the judgment is formed. It may affect the outcome of the process, but it does not affect its integrity. Accordingly, the issue is not merely one of punishing an offender for something he may do in the future. It is the recognition that the protection of society requires the offender to be prevented from perpetrating the offences which he was preparing to commit."
Phillip Boulten SC, a lawyer for Lodhi, claimed that in the 2006 trial, his client's links to Willy Brigitte had led to members of the jury finding him guilty by association.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 23, 2007 5:44 PM
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