Milad bin Ahmad-Shah al-Ahmadzai was arrested on charges that he broke into a cash machine. See, if Australia would just be more generous with the jizya, this poor chap would never have been “radicalized” by al-Awlaki. “Man with terror links held after raid,” by Dylan Welch for The Age, September 29 (thanks to Block Ness):
A SYDNEY man with ”demonstrated connections” to one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist preachers has been arrested by Sydney police over allegations he broke into a cash machine.
Milad bin Ahmad-Shah al-Ahmadzai was arrested after three other men were prevented from robbing a cash van at gunpoint in far western Sydney yesterday morning.
Ahmadzai, 21, is alleged by Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, to have had contact with the Yemen-based al-Qaeda preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Awlaki is of great concern to Western intelligence agencies due to his repeatedly demonstrated ability to radicalise via the internet young Muslim men in Western countries.
Awlaki is seen as such a threat that last year he was placed on a CIA ”catch or kill” list.
Last year, Ahmadzai was one of 23 Australian residents whom ASIO judged of such concern that it alerted US authorities to them. The US State Department subsequently added them to a domestic no-fly database, according to a leaked cable from the US embassy in Canberra.
But yesterday morning, Ahmadzai was in a different type of trouble, arrested by detectives from the New South Wales Police robbery squad at his home in Ermington in Sydney’s west.
He was arrested shortly after three other men, aged between 24 and 29, were found by detectives in a car park in Cecil Hills in Sydney’s outer suburbs.
The three men were in two stolen cars and police allege they found a rifle, two handguns and several balaclavas with them. An armoured cash van was also in the car park when the arrests occurred.
The three were taken to western Sydney police stations and charged with robbery and firearms offences.
After the arrests, police executed search warrants at Ahmadzai’s home and five other locations, seizing a Subaru WRX, a pistol, ammunition, Australian and US currency, a pill press, anabolic steroids, two-way radios, laptop computers, mobile phones and passports….