Sydney - Two Sydney brothers have been jailed for at least 30
and 27 years for plotting to plant a bomb hidden in a meat grinder on
an Etihad flight out of Australia.
Khaled Khayat, 52, and Mahmoud Khayat, 34, were found guilty in May
and September respectively of conspiring to commit a terrorist act
between January and July, 2017.
The court ruled the brothers had planned to slip a meat grinder
packed with explosives into the baggage of their unwitting brother,
Amer Khayat, who was catching an Etihad flight from Sydney to Abu
Dhabi.
In the New South Wales Supreme Court on Tuesday, Justice Christine
Adamson sentenced Khaled Khayat to 40 years and Mahmoud Khayat to 36
years in prison, with non-parole periods of 30 and 27 years
respectively, according to court judgement.
"That no one actually suffered physical injury or was killed as a
result of this conspiracy does not make it other than extremely
serious," the judge said at the sentencing hearing.
"The objective seriousness was very high for each offender."
Australian-Lebanese dual citizen Amer Khayat shows his Australian passport to journalists, after his release from prison in Roumieh, east of Beirut, Lebanon, on September 20, 2019. File picture: Bilal Hussein/AP
The plot included their fourth brother Tarek Khayat, 47, who fought
for Islamic State in Syria. He instructed his Sydney brothers to
plant the bomb and supplied the explosives.
Prosecutors said the plan was abandoned when the luggage was found to
be overweight when checking in and the meat grinder had to be
removed.
Prosecutor Lincoln Cowley told the court during the trial in
September that Khaled Khayat was working on a second plot to plant
poisonous gas on a flight when he was arrested by police.
Both brothers maintain their innocence.