3 ISIS-Inspired Men Sentenced for Australia Terror Plot

FILE PHOTO: A row of newly built apartment blocks is seen in the suburb of Epping, Sydney, Australia February 1, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Westbrook/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A row of newly built apartment blocks is seen in the suburb of Epping, Sydney, Australia February 1, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Westbrook/File Photo
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3 ISIS-Inspired Men Sentenced for Australia Terror Plot

FILE PHOTO: A row of newly built apartment blocks is seen in the suburb of Epping, Sydney, Australia February 1, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Westbrook/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A row of newly built apartment blocks is seen in the suburb of Epping, Sydney, Australia February 1, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Westbrook/File Photo

Three men were given lengthy prison sentences on Friday for an ISIS-inspired terror plot to cause mass casualties in Australia's second largest city Melbourne during the 2016 Christmas period.

Hamza Abbas, 24, Ahmed Mohamed, 27 and Abdullah Chaarani, 29, were found guilty last year of plotting to use machetes and homemade bombs to target major sites -- including a train station and a church -- in a December attack.

In handing down the sentences at the Supreme Court of Victoria, judge Christopher Beale said the men had been accessing online material supportive of ISIS and extremism in the lead-up to their arrest.

Beale said the men came to believe their planned "mass slaughter of innocent civilians" would be a "glorious act".

"The stupidity of that belief was only matched by its malevolence," Beale said.

Abbas, who was involved in the conspiracy for a shorter time, was jailed for 22 years with a non-parole period of 16 years and six months. Mohamed and Chaarani, who were facing their second terror charge, were jailed for 38 years.

Police uncovered the plot after monitoring the Australian-born men's phone conversations, text messages and emails, and all four were arrested on December 22, 2016.

During a plea hearing before Beale last month, Mohamed and Chaarani claimed they had renounced ISIS and had worked toward deradicalization since their arrest.

Then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called their plans "one of the most substantial terrorist plots that have been disrupted over the last several years".



French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
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French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)

France's intelligence chief said on Tuesday that all aspects of Iran's nuclear program have been pushed back several months after American and Israeli air strikes, but there is uncertainty over where its highly-enriched uranium stocks are.

"The Iranian nuclear program is the material, it is highly-enriched uranium, it is a capacity to convert this uranium from the gaseous phase to the solid phase. It is the manufacturing of the core and it is the delivery," Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE intelligence service, told LCI television.

"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged and that the nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months."

Lerner, who was speaking for the first time on national television, said a small part of Iran's highly-enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed, but the rest remained in the hands of the authorities.

"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.

Other intelligence assessments have also suggested that Iran retains a hidden stockpile of enriched uranium and the technical capacity to rebuild.

Lerner echoed those comments saying there was a possibility Iran could press ahead with a clandestine program with smaller enrichment capacities.

"That's why France is so attached to finding a diplomatic solution to this nuclear crisis," he said.