Lebanon monitored Australia bomb plot suspects: Lebanese InteriorMinister

Lebanon monitored the brothers accused of plotting to blow up a flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi for greater than a 12 months and coordinated with the Australian authorities on it for a long time, the Lebanese interior minister stated on Monday.

Australian police charged Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat this month with two counts of planning a terrorist assault after conducting raids to disrupt what government described as an Islamic nation-inspired plot to bomb an Etihad airlines flight.
Lebanese interior Minister Nohad Machnouk advised a information convention that one of the guys’s brothers, Tareq Khayat, had moved to the Islamic nation stronghold of Raqqa in Syria and come to be a commander within the jihadist organization greater than a 12 months in the past.
Lebanon’s inner protection force then positioned Tareq, Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat, and a fourth brother, Amer Khayat, underneath surveillance. Khaled, Mahmoud and Amer were all dwelling in Australia but every now and then visited Lebanon, he said in Beirut. Machnouk stated the brothers were Lebanese.
He said Amer Khayat had arrived in Lebanon on July 15, the day Australian police have stated the plotters attempted to smuggle a bomb onto an Etihad flight from Sydney. Australian police additionally said a person had attempted to test in bags with out knowing that it contained a bomb, which changed into hidden in a meat grinder, located there through his brother. but, Machnouk said Amer Khayat changed into to have accomplished the attack and that a Lebanese inner intelligence organization had located he changed into “worried inside the operation”. He said a bomb had additionally been hidden in a big toddler’s doll within the bags.
He did no longer say what has happened to Amer Khayat seeing that he landed in Lebanon. The plot become foiled because the bags passed the airline’s weight restrict, Machnouk stated.
Australian police had previously said it appeared that one of the accused had left the airport, taking the baggage with him, whilst his brother boarded the plane and left Australia. On Tuesday, Australian police said it was now not appropriate to comment in addition on the details of a cutting-edge research that turned into additionally earlier than Australian courts. “we’ve got a near and cooperative relationship with the Lebanese authorities and are operating closely in this investigation,” an Australian Federal Police spokeswoman stated in an e-mail.
requested whether the operation might had been a hit if the bags had now not passed the load restrict, Machnouk said: “in all likelihood, yes”. He said facts from Lebanese intelligence had “assisted in foiling a big operation aiming to blow up a plane”. “The aircraft had a hundred and twenty Lebanese on board in addition to other nationalities,” Machnouk said.