Devout Muslim hostage-taker in Australia had been previously acquitted of jihad terror plot

Did they think that because they acquitted him that he was not a jihad? Did they think he ceased to be devout and stopped believing in the Qur’an’s injunctions to kill infidels? No. He was just waiting for another time to strike, and he found one.

“Hostage-taker in Australia had been acquitted of terror plot,” Associated Press, June 5, 2017:

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A gunman who killed a man and took a woman hostage before dying in a police shootout had been acquitted of plotting a terror attack at a Sydney army base years earlier, police said Tuesday. Three police officers were wounded.

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The siege Monday at an apartment building in a Melbourne suburb was being treated as an act of terror, but Victoria state Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said the gunman appeared to have acted alone and not as part of any ongoing plot or threat.

“There is nothing that we’ve found thus far that would suggest to us that this was anything that was … planned or done in concert with others,” Ashton said.

The gunman, Yacqub Khayre, 29, was one of two men acquitted by a jury in 2010 of plotting a suicide attack in Sydney. Three people were convicted of conspiracy. Police thwarted that plot before it could be executed.

Khayre, a Somali refugee, served prison sentences for arson and violent crimes unrelated to extremism before being paroled in November, Ashton said.

On Monday, Khayre booked an appointment with an escort in an apartment building in Brighton and arrived carrying a shotgun, sparking a 2-hour siege.

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Police were called after neighbors heard the shotgun discharge as Khayre killed a Chinese-born Australian man employed by the escort agency in the lobby.

Khayre then called police to say he had a hostage in an apartment and made threats to her if police intervened. They tried to negotiate with him before Khayre walked out of the building firing the shotgun.

One police officer was shot in the neck and ear and two officers suffered wounds to their hands, but none of the wounds was life-threatening, Ashton said. The woman was not harmed.

Khayre spoke about al-Qaida in phone calls to police and to Seven Network television, and Ashton said the gunman possibly had plotted to lure police into an ambush. But it was too early to know if the gunman set out to target police or “seized the opportunity he thought was presented to him last evening,” Ashton said….

Police did not regard the Islamic State group’s claim of responsibility for the Melbourne violence as evidence that it was planned….