Australia's most senior Islamic State fighter has appeared in a propaganda video urging his "beloved brothers" in Australia to attack, while also praising a Melbourne teen killed during a confrontation with police.
The video mentions Numan Haider who was shot dead last September, the picture shows his body leaving the Afghan Mosque of Victoria. Photo: AAP / Julian Smith
In the slick 12-minute video, former Melbourne man Neil Prakash, believed to be in Syria, makes a direct call for Muslims in Australia to launch attacks at home.
"I also send a message to my brothers, my beloved brothers in Islam in Australia," he says in the video, released online overnight and days after an alleged Islamic State-inspired terror plot was foiled in Melbourne.
"Now is the time to rise, now is the time to wake up. You must start attacking before they attack you."
The video does not make direct reference to the foiled Anzac Day plot, and was likely recorded weeks ago.
But Prakash, otherwise known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, does make specific reference to 18-year-old Numan Haider, who was shot dead last September when he attacked two counter-terrorism officers with a knife in a Melbourne police station car park.
Like Haider, who was friends with the five teenagers arrested at the weekend, Prakash had also been a regular visitor to the controversial Al-Furqan Centre in Springvale in Melbourne.
"My dear brother Numan - I knew this brother personally," he says in the video.
"And the efforts that he tried to make hijrah (migration to Islamic State), when he failed because the government took his passport, it did not stop him. Look what he did, brothers," the 23-year-old Prakash says.
Two of the five men arrested in pre-dawn raids across Melbourne on Saturday - Harun Causevic and Sevdet Besim, both 18 - have been charged with conspiracy to commit acts done in preparation for, or planning, terrorist acts.
A third man is facing weapons charges.
It's alleged the group was planning to attack police officers and members of the public on Anzac Day.
- AAP -
