A Sydney man who claimed he was trying to prevent a terrorist attack has been found guilty of plotting to blow up an Etihad plane with a bomb hidden in a meat grinder.
Khaled Khayat, 51, had pleaded not guilty to conspiring - between mid-January and late-July 2017 - to prepare or plan a terrorist act.
But a NSW Supreme Court jury on Wednesday found him guilty of the charge which involved the Etihad bomb plot and another plan to carry out a lethal poisonous gas attack on people in a confined space.
The jury is still deliberating on the same charge for Khayat's 34-year-old brother Mahmoud.
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Prosecutor Lincoln Crowley QC alleged the bomb was in a meat grinder to be put into the luggage of a passenger who was flying out of Sydney on the Etihad flight.
But the plan was said to have been abandoned because the baggage was found to be overweight.
Crowley said when Khaled Khayat was arrested police found a piece of paper in his wallet that had Arabic words, numbers and symbols written on it.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Khaled Mahmoud Khayat claimed he was trying to prevent a terrorist attack.
He said the paper was examined by a forensic chemist and Arabic interpreters, who determined that one side of the paper included the correct chemical equation for poisonous gas, while the other side had further details relating to the gas.
In his three-day police interview, Khayat spoke of walking into the airport with the concealed bomb.
He said when he saw children at the airport he thought "Don't do it, don't be stupid, don't do it" and removed the bomb from the baggage.
But his barrister, Richard Pontella, told the jury that contrary to what his client told police, he never took the bomb to the airport and actually was trying to prevent a terrorist attack.
He said his client didn't enter into an agreement to do acts in preparation for a terrorist attack.
"The defence case is the polar opposite, " he said. "He agreed to do those acts in order to prevent a terrorist act from ever occurring, which ultimately he did.
"The bomb never made it onto the plane. As far as he was concerned, it was never going to make it onto the plane."
Khayat gave evidence saying he put the bomb in a yoghurt container and buried it in a relative's backyard where it remained for weeks.
The jury will continue its deliberations on Mahmoud Khayat on Thursday.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/112394721/sydney-man-guilty-of-plot-to-blow-up-plane-with-meat-grinder-bomb
2019-05-01 09:58:00Z
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