Four men who were arrested over the weekend for a planned terror attack in Sydney have now been revealed to have links with the aviation industry.
The son of one of the men who was arrested, studied aviation management and reportedly mixes with a network of pilots and airline workers. The revelations come after it has been revealed that the arrested men were also talking to foreign fighters in Syria, with the communications being picked up by allied intelligence agencies.
(Photo: WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images)
It is reported that these communications were fed back to the Australian authorities, who were then prompted to conduct the counter-terrorism operations over the weekend.
The four men remain in custody at the Sydney Police Centre on suspicion of attempting to build an improvised explosive device that could have been smuggled onto a device. Police believe that the men may have already made an attempt to smuggle their homemade bomb onto an international flight prior to the raids.
The men are reported to have strong connections with international terrorist group, the Islamic State. Security expert Neil Fergus has said that this latest plot has raised the stakes in the war against terror due to its sophistication, “If this does, as it looks like it will, turn out to be an IS-inspired or -directed plot, and if the technology which is being used is of a similar level to what we’ve seen from Al Qaeda, then the threat globally has just risen a notch, there’s no question about that.”
