Sydney, Australia – Police arrested 15 terrorism suspects in raids early today and said they had foiled a major attack.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said 400 officers were involved in raids in Sydney that captured six men, and nine more suspects were picked up in the southern city of Melbourne.
“I’m satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack … here in Australia,” Moroney told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Police declined to give details of a likely target, but Christine Nixon, Victoria state police chief, said next year’s Commonwealth Games, to be staged in Melbourne, were not one.
“It’s the largest operation of counterterrorism that’s ever been conducted in this country,” Nixon said.
Moroney said chemicals that apparently could have been used to make bombs were found during the raids, which followed a 16-month investigation.
Rob Stary, a Melbourne lawyer who said he represented eight people arrested in the city, said most of his clients were charged with being members of a banned organization. The suspects were expected to appear in courts in Sydney and Melbourne later today.
Stary said one of those arrested in Melbourne was the outspoken radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakr, an Algerian-Australian who in the past has called Osama bin Laden a “great man.”
Australia has never been hit by a major terror attack, but its citizens have repeatedly been targeted overseas, particularly in neighboring Indonesia.
Last year, the country’s embassy in Jakarta was damaged by a suicide bomber, and dozens of Australians were killed in bombings in 2002 and last month on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
Prime Minister John Howard’s opponents say his strong support for the U.S.-led strikes on Iraq and the decision to send troops there and to Afghanistan have made it inevitable that Australia will be attacked.
Last week, the Australian Parliament approved an amendment to existing anti-terrorism laws that allows police to arrest people involved in the early stages of planning an unspecified terrorist attack. Nixon said some of the arrests today were made possible by the new legislation.
