Lebanon helped foil ISIS ‘Barbie doll bomb’ plot in Australia
TEHRAN (Basirat) :Lebanese intelligence helped foil an Islamic State terrorist attack on an airplane bound for Abu Dhabi from Sydney in July, the Middle East country's interior minister said Monday. The alleged attacker planned to blow up the plane with a bomb hidden in a Barbie doll.
Lebanese national Amer Khayyat had planned, according to Interior Minister
Nouhad Machnouk, to blow up the plane 20 minutes after take-off but had to
abandon his plan because the bag containing the explosives was overweight and he
could not take it aboard.
He was detained upon arriving in Lebanon. His two brothers, Khaled and Mahmoud
Khayyat, were arrested in Sydney in July and charged with "two counts of acts
done in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.”
At the time of the arrests, Deputy Commissioner for National Security Michael
Phelan described the plan as "one of the most sophisticated plots that has ever
been attempted on Australian soil.”
The fourth brother, Tarek, was allegedly an IS commander living in Raqqa.
The plane at the centre of the bomb plot is believed to be a July 15 Etihad
flight out of Sydney, with 400 people onboard, 120 of them Lebanese nationals,
according to Machnouk.
Machnouk went on to claim that the suspects wanted to punish the UAE and
Australia for being part of an the coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and
Iraq and called on intelligence agencies to work together.
"When four Lebanese brothers in Australia decide to blow up an Emirati jet, this
means that the whole world should work together to fight terrorism," he said.
"Coordination should be 24 hours a day between all security agencies to stop
such attacks."
SOURCE :RT
