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Sydney police arrest two in anti-terror raid | |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Two men have been arrested in Sydney on suspicion of breaking Australian laws on involvement in foreign conflicts. | |
Counter terrorism police raided several homes across the city on Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation. | |
Memhet Biber, 25, allegedly travelled to the Middle East in 2013 with the al-Nusra Front, a Syria-based jihadist group at that time linked to al-Qaeda. | |
A 17-year-old suspect is accused of attempting to travel in 2015 to fight with the Islamic State (IS) group. | |
The Australian government has made it a criminal offence under to take part in, fund, recruit or train for the conflict with IS, or to travel for certain areas in Syria and Iraq under IS control. | |
Police were quick to defend the amount of time between the alleged offences and the arrests, saying a lack of law enforcement in the region made it hard to gather evidence. | |
"We ensure that we continue to take the matters of foreign incursion very seriously," Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan told reporters. | |
Police also said that the involvement of a teenager was troubling. | |
"We have a juvenile who appears to be involved, and we will allege is involved potentially in wanting to engage in hostile activities, and this is a continuing concern for us," Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said. | |
Mr Biber was one a group of men that convicted terror recruiter Hamdi Alqudsi helped travel from Australia to Syria to fight alongside IS militant. | |
Alqudsi was the first person to be prosecuted under Australia's foreign incursion laws and was in August sentenced to six years in jail. | |
Photos posted to Mr Biber's Facebook page in 2013 show bombed buildings, injured children and a dead aid worker in Syria. | |
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said such cases showed why the government "continues to give these agencies the resources and the legislative powers they need to keep us safe". |
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