Australian court sentences two in Islamic State bomb plot foiled with Israeli help

An Australian court on Tuesday sentenced two brothers to a total of 76 years in jail for an Islamic State-inspired plot to blow up a United Arab Emirates Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi in 2017.

Australian-Lebanese brothers Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat had planned to disguise a bomb as a meat grinder and pass it to an unwitting third brother who was about to board an Etihad Airways flight, i24 News reported.

A fourth brother, who is a member of ISIS, was overseeing the plot from abroad, while the bomb’s components and the instructions regarding its assembly were provided by the terror group.

When the plot failed, the suspects began planning another attack, this time using poison gas, according to Australian authorities. They were arrested in the early planning stages.

According to the report, Israel claimed in 2018 to have tipped off Australia about the plot, revealing that the intelligence came from its secretive Unit 8200, which deals with signals intelligence.

The judge in the case said the unwitting brother had been targeted by the others because of his drinking, clubbing and gambling, and because he was gay.

Source: JNS