“A neighbour said the ‘beautiful family’ had lived in the house for at least a decade. ‘They’re just lovely, everyday, people,’ she said.”
The problem here is that in Islam, jihad violence is not incompatible with being “lovely, everyday people.” The command to wage war against unbelievers is not something that need be accompanied by rage or irrational, violent behavior. A perfectly ordinary, reasonable, kindly Muslim may one day decide, for any number of reasons, to heed that command. One need not have previously been psychotic or deranged to do so.
“Man arrested over alleged Melbourne New Year’s Eve terror plot for Federation Square,” by Anthony Colangelo and Nino Bucci, The Age, November 28, 2017 (thanks to Jill):
A young man has been arrested after allegedly planning to carry out a terrorist attack with an automatic rifle at Melbourne’s Federation Square on New Year’s Eve.
The 20-year-old man, who lives with his parents and siblings in Werribee, was allegedly planning to shoot and kill as many people as he could in an attack.
Victoria Police deputy commissioner Shane Patton said a Australian-born 20-year-old sought to purchase, but did not acquire, an automatic weapon to carry out the attack.
He was arrested by heavily armed police on Synnot Street, Werribee, in front of shocked bystanders on Monday afternoon.
Victoria Police deputy commissioner Shane Patton said the man, an Australian-born Muslim with Somali parents, tried to buy an automatic firearm through “face to face interactions” but was ultimately unsuccessful.
The 20-year-old man was arrested on Synnot Street in Werribee on Monday.
“The potential of the attack is catastrophic. This is a person who has expressed an intention to try and kill as many people as he could. It’s horrendous,” Mr Patton told reporters on Tuesday.
“We have been monitoring him for a very lengthy period of time.
The family’s home is being searched by police after his place of work, a computer business in Footscray, and a relative’s home in Meadow Heights were inspected on Monday.
On Tuesday morning, the man’s father spoke briefly to media from the front yard of his brick veneer home.
He denied his son would have harmed anyone, and then quickly went back inside, where police are still searching.
“He’s very innocent,” the man’s father said.
A neighbour said the “beautiful family” had lived in the house for at least a decade.
“They’re just lovely, everyday, people,” she said.
The suspect was allegedly planning to shoot and kill as many people as he could in Federation Square.
The man’s father had apologised to her on Tuesday morning for the hassle regarding the arrest.
“I believe he didn’t know anything,” the neighbour said. “I just felt like he was more heartbroken.”
Victoria Police deputy commissioner Shane Patton (left) and AFP assistant commissioner Ian McCartney.
The neighbour arrived home on Monday afternoon after picking up her daughter from school to find eight to 10 police cars lining the street.
“It was quite frightening.”
The 20-year-old man was arrested on the corner of Synnot and Bridge streets in Werribee, which is a shopping area one street behind the suburb’s main retail strip, just after 3pm on Monday.
The owner of Wix Computers in Footscray, where the accused man worked, said 10 to 12 police officers stormed the store on Monday and took a computer, a hard drive and CCTV footage from the shop.
He described the man as a quiet boy who did work experience at the store for about two to three hours at a time, sometimes one or twice a week, sometimes less.
“He was a very, very quiet boy. He never spoke much. It was a shock,” the owner said.
The owner said he had met the young man’s father at a mosque in Hoppers Crossing.
His father wanted him to do work experience so he could go to university next year and eventually get a job in the computer industry.
The young man was in possession of an al-Qaeda guidebook on how to carry out terrorist attacks and is an Islamic State sympathiser, police allege.
“He has accessed documents produced by al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula … a guidebook in respect to how to commit a terrorist act and also how to use firearms, guns and handguns and rifles,” Mr Patton said.
“He is associated with other persons in the Victorian extremists community … it is a very small community of extremists.
“This is a person who would become particularly energised when overseas events occurred. He expressed a great amount of interest in committing an attack himself.”
Mr Patton reassured the community the man was acting alone and no threats were ongoing.
“We are not looking for any other suspects,” he said.
Authorities are still investigating how the young Werribee man became radicalised, Mr Patton said.
Police do not believe he is linked to any mosques in Melbourne. They would not reveal if his family or friends knew of his intentions….