Quotes of the Day

Just before midnight on a remote road in rural Victoria last December, worried residents spotted a group of young men in military-style clothing gathered around several vehicles. They called local police, who confronted the men in bushland near Kinglake, about 60 km northeast of Melbourne. The group claimed they were there to play paintball, a game - illegal in Victoria - in which participants shoot at each other with paint-filled pellets. But in one of the cars was a laptop computer which police say had little to do with harmless play: it contained a digital manual on homemade explosives.

The men were let go, but not forgotten. Their activities were reported to Operation Pendennis, Australia's largest ever anti-terrorism investigation. Launched early last year, reportedly after a tip-off from a member of Melbourne's Muslim community, the Pendennis taskforce soon found links between the Kinglake group and people already under suspicion for plotting a terrorist attack in Melbourne. Over the next several months, the investigation widened to include a related group of young Muslim men in Sydney, and controversial cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 45.

On Nov. 8, Pendennis pounced. Police in Sydney and Melbourne arrested Benbrika and 16 other suspects, and seized firearms, enough chemicals and equipment to make several large bombs, and computers. Hours after the raids, New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney told the media: "We've disrupted a large-scale operation which, had it been allowed to go through to fruition, we certainly believe would have been catastrophic.''

Nine men were arrested in Sydney; eight in Melbourne. Most were of Lebanese background and aged between 20 and 31. In most cases the suspects were seized as they slept and surrendered without a struggle, but in Sydney's southwest, Omar Baladjam allegedly shot at police when confronted walking near the Green Valley Mosque. Police say he pulled a handgun from his backpack and fired, wounding an officer in the hand. Police returned fire, hitting the spray painter and sometime television actor in the neck. A few suburbs away, police called in a helicopter with a heat-seeking camera to help locate father of five Mohamed Elomar, who hid in a park near his home in Condell Park. On Nov. 11, 25-year-old Izzydeen Atik was arrested after police stopped his car in a Sydney street.

Courts in Sydney and Melbourne were told that hours of voice recordings and other evidence would show the Melbourne group were members of a terrorist organization led by Benbrika and had been involved in discussions about bomb-making, military training and jihad. One man had allegedly expressed a desire to conduct a suicide "martyr mission" in Australia but had been denied permission; others were suspected to have trained with terrorist groups overseas. Crown Prosecutor Richard Maidment said the surveillance had detected "a constant theme ... 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."

In Sydney eight men were charged with conspiracy to prepare and plan a terrorist act in relation to the manufacture of explosives. In a bail hearing for Mirsad Mulahalilovic, police allege the Bosnian refugee's home contained plastic caps and piping - materials that can be used for explosives packing - together with a chemical which could be used to manufacture explosives.

Many of the arrested men were known to intelligence agencies and police. As far back as 2000, police and asio agents had raided the homes of Mohamed Elomar and some of his family. Some of his brothers owned a property in bushland near Canberra that was allegedly used for weapons training, and where a makeshift explosive had been found. Police raids found spent cartridges from semi-automatic weapons, a shot-up vehicle and what appeared to be a home-made mortar bomb.

Others suspects are believed to have links to the now banned Pakistani terrorist group Lasker-e-Toiba. It attracted recruits from around the world to undergo jihad training at camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After 9/11, the group sent supporters to fight on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Australian David Hicks, currently held by the U.S. at Guantánamo, is believed to have trained with LeT in Pakistan.

Former rock musician Shane Kent is suspected of training with LeT, as are Khalid Cheikho and his nephew Mustafa Cheikho. Abdul Rhakid Hasan allegedly provided lodging for LeT-trained terror suspect Frenchman Willie Brigitte, who was deported from Australia in 2003.

After the arrests, Prime Minister John Howard, whose government recently announced tough new anti-terror laws, said on Sydney radio: "The idea that terrorists are people that are flown in from another country to do their wicked deeds and then flown out is completely altered." It's now dawning on Australians that terrorism may not always happen elsewhere.

• Rory Callinan
• Eighteen men are arrested in Australia, averting what police fear was an imminent terrorist attack