Aussie cricket star's brother arrested over terror "hit list" set up

Source: Xinhua| 2018-12-04 11:42:34|Editor: Xiaoxia
Video PlayerClose

SYDNEY, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The brother of Australian cricket star Usman Khawaja, has been arrested by counter-terrorism police in Sydney, in relation to a fake terror "hit list".

Stemming from a dispute over a woman, police accuse 37-year-old Arsalan Khawaja of drafting the document in an attempt to frame a colleague.

"We believe that this was planned and it was calculated," New South Wales (NSW) State Assistant Commissioner Mick Willing said at a media conference in Sydney on Tuesday.

"We have no information to suggest that there is any ongoing threat to the community arising from our inquiries into the matter."

Occurring back in August, a 25-year-old Sri Lankan man, Mohamed Kamer Nilar Nizamdeen, was charged with a number of terror offences and held in custody for one month, after authorities found a notebook that allegedly detailed several assassination plots on high-level targets such as then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

With Federal Police storming the University of NSW campus where the wrongly accused man worked in order to make the dramatic arrest, the case garnered a huge amount of media attention before all charges were eventually dropped later in September.

Although authorities said they felt sorry for wrongly arresting the man, Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Ian McCartney explained given the "serious threats to a number of high-profile politicians and iconic sites," officers had no choice but to act "expeditiously".

Arsalan Khawaja is expected to be formally charged with forgery and attempting to pervert justice later Tuesday.

TOP STORIES
EDITOR’S CHOICE
MOST VIEWED
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020070750000000000000011100001376499251