Terrorist Plot to Kill Australians

This is the second time we've had 5 Muslims stand before a court on terrorism charges, but this time it was in the Supreme Court in Melbourne. Yesterday five devout Muslims were accused of planning an attack on a Sydney Army Base, intending to kill as many people as possible with bombs and guns.

Wissam Mahmoud Fattal 34 from Melbourne, Nayef El Sayed 26 of Glenroy, Saney Edow Aweys 27 of Carlton North, Yacqub Khayre 23 of Meadow Heights and Abdirahmin Mohamud Ahmed 26 of Preston have all pleaded not guilty.

It's alleged that they were motivated by Australia's involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and said they were on a mission to defend their Islamic faith. A panel of 15 jurors were selected to hear the case. The trial is expected to last up to a year and will include hundreds of witnesses.

Crown Prosecutor Richard Maidment SC opened the case. He said they were part of a group who believed the world was divided into two camps - those who strictly adhere to the Muslim faith and those who did not. He told the jury the men felt it was their religious obligation to carry out the defence of Islam and other Muslims. He said they possessed images and vidoes of planes going into the twin towers, ritual beheadings and step-by-step instructions on how to make a bomb. ASIO had the men under constant surveillance for some time, tapping their phones and following their movements.

As he prepared to martyr himself by attacking the Holesworthy Army Base in Sydney, Wissam Fattal asked his mother "Don't you want paradise? Don't you want your son and yourself to go to paradise to the highest degree? This terrestrial life is pain mum." In the courtroom, Islamic women were dressed in the hijab. In the dock, the five accused men, two Lebanese and three Somali, wore suits and ties. Because of the expected duration of the trial, the jury is made up of 10 men and 4 women.

In an intercepted phone conversation, Mr Fattall tells a man called Aref that he should stay in an Arabic country. "It is decadence here" he said "I want out of here". He prepared his parents in Lebanon of his martydom. He told his mother "I am entrusting my cause to Allah, the Glorious and Almighty." In September 2008 he said to his mother "Supplicate for me to be killed at the hands of the False Messenger." And his mother said "my sweetheart" and "my darling" and later said "Thanks be to Allah I am so happy with you."

Mr Robinson said that the men took steps to obtain a fatwa, or religious decree, to endorse the raid on the army base. When they couldn't get one from an Islamic sheik in Australia, Walid Mohamed went to Somalia to get it and was obviously successful.

So there were Muslim sheiks in Australia who knew about the proposed attack and what I would like to know is - what did they do about it?