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September 20th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Abdul Benbrika has escaped trial.
Source: Herald Sun
RADICAL Muslim cleric Abdul Benbrika has escaped trial over his plot to bomb Australia and he could walk free from jail in only six years.
One of his co-accused Melbourne terrorists already has been released and the other two are eligible to be freed in November.
The decision to abandon the case was made despite terror cell members associated with Benbrika ordering or buying all the chemicals and equipment needed to make a “Mother of Satan” bomb capable of killing hundreds.
Police planted many listening devices in the homes of various cell members and secretly recorded 16,418 hours of Benbrika and the Melbourne and Sydney cell members talking during a 16-month inquiry.
They also tapped hundreds of phones and monitored 97,480 calls between Benbrika and Melbourne and Sydney cell members in relation to their alleged plot to commit a terrorist act, which would not be put before a jury.
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The police and legal costs associated with trying to get Benbrika and three of his followers to trial on conspiracy to commit a terrorist act charges were at least $20 million.
Algerian-born Benbrika was an illegal immigrant who was ordered out of Australia in 1990, 1994 and again in 1995 before winning an appeal to stay.
Benbrika, 51, a professed religious sheik, and six of his Melbourne cell members were jailed in 2008 after being found guilty of being members of a terrorist organisation.
He and Melbourne terror cell members Aimen Joud, 26, Fadl Sayadi, 31, and Ahmed Raad, 28, were due to face trial this year on the more serious charge of conspiring to commit a terrorist act in Australia, which carries a maximum jail term of life.
Five cell members in New South Wales have already been jailed for between 23 and 28 years on the same charge, over the same conspiracy and on similar evidence to that against the Melbourne terror cell members.
But Victorian Supreme Court judge Terry Forrest recently granted a defence application to permanently stay the conspiracy case against Benbrika, Joud, Sayadi and Raad, saying it would be “oppressive” to subject them to a second trial.
Police and prosecutors are privately disappointed the case has been abandoned as they consider the evidence against Benbrika and his three co-accused was overwhelming.
In handing down his decision to abandon the conspiracy to commit a terrorist act charges, Justice Forrest said if it had proceeded it would be “lengthy, complex and expensive”.
Justice Forrest also found each of the men would not receive a significantly longer sentence if convicted in the second trial.
“I have concluded that the proposed conspiracy trial is an abuse of the court’s process and that I ought to stay it permanently in respect of all accused,” he said.
“The public interest in bringing the accused men to trial is diminished by the fact that they have already been prosecuted and punished for most of their criminal conduct and that they will not receive significant additional terms of imprisonment.
“While I have found that this second prosecution was commenced in good faith, I consider the objective of trying each accused a second time is oppressive.
“It is oppressive because each of the accused has already been the subject of a very lengthy first criminal trial involving at times unconscionably harsh conditions of incarceration and transport.
“I am satisfied that all four accused men have made out their individual cases for abuse of process on the basis of oppression.
“In each case, in my view, the oppression outweighs the public interest in trying the accused.”
The AFP’s national manager of counter terrorism, Steve Lancaster, yesterday praised the joint AFP and Victoria Police taskforce for its work in arresting and charging Benbrika and his terror cell members.
“As a result of this joint taskforce investigation the Australian public was protected from a terrorist act,” Assistant Commissioner Lancaster said.
“The 2008 court result is evidence of the success and professionalism of the taskforce, and the ongoing collaborative working relationships that exist between the AFP, state police, the Commonwealth Director of Public
Prosecutions and intelligence agencies.”
Prosecutor Richard Maidment, SC, told the Victorian Supreme Court during the 2008 trial on the less serious terrorism charges that Benbrika was “at the hub of the organisation and he was its director and its leader”.
“The kind of terrorist act contemplated by the organisation included a bombing attack where maximum damage and loss of life could be inflicted, such as at a football ground or a railway station,” he said.
“Listening devices had detected a constant theme, over many months, directed at violent jihad, which has no respect for human life, and embracing the notion that it’s permitted in certain circumstances to kill innocent women and children.”
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