Five Muslim extremists were on Monday jailed up to 28 years by an Australian court for plotting violent attacks to protest the country's involvement in "War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy handed out the sentence to the five men who cannot be named and who had been found guilty in October 2008 for stockpiling arms and explosives and chemical and bomb making manuals for attacks on unspecified targets.
Justice Whealy, who presided over the trial since November 2008, said the involvement of the five had been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
"There is no reason to doubt that if the law agencies had not intervened, their plan would have come to fruition in early 2006 or thereabouts," the judge said while delivering the verdict in Australia's biggest terrorist conspiracy.
Four of the accused of Lebanese descent and the fifth one were handed maximum jail terms ranging from 23 to 28 years with the shortest non-parole period being 17 years.
After the sentences were pronounced, all five broke into smiles. Two men shouted from the back of the court in Arabic: "Be patient. Allah is with you."
The men were found guilty last October on charges of plotting terrorist acts between July 2004 and November 2005. During the trial, an associate of the suspect had testified that the group had planned bombings at Australian Rules football final in 2005, which was to be attended by over 22,000 people and killing the then prime minister John Howard.
One of those convicted was found to have undergone terrorist training in camps in northern Pakistan.
The men had been found with pictures and videos glorifying Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and hijacked aircrafts smashing into World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, as well as beheading and death sentences carried out by terrorist groups in Pakistan.
Police also found literature from their houses, which supported indiscriminate killings, mass murders and martyrdom in pursuit of violence.
The 44-year-old man believed to be the main organiser of the conspiracy, was sentenced to a maximum term of 28 years in prison, commencing on November 8, 2005, when he was arrested, with a non-parole period of 21 years.
Another man (36) was sentenced to 27 years in prison from the time of his arrest in 2005, with a non-parole period of 20 years and three months and a 40-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in prison from the time of his arrest in 2005, with a non-parole period of 19 years and six months.
Also charged was a 34-year-old man who was sentenced to 26 years in prison from the time of his arrest in 2005, with a non-parole period also of 19 years and six months and a 25-year-old man who entered the conspiracy later than the others and was not arrested until September 21, 2006, received a term of 23 years, backdated to the time of his arrest with a non-parole period of 17 years and three months.
The five men were among nine people arrested in a large scale police crackdown in 2005 and 2006. Of those, four have pleaded guilty to lesser offences and have been dealt with.
