International News
Terror cell payment for phone card, court told
By Gary Hughes - The Australian
Aug 1, 2008 - 6:19:04 AM

FUNDS supposedly given to an alleged Muslim terror cell may have been nothing more than a payment for an international phone card, the jury in Australia's largest terrorist trial has been told.

Defence barrister David Brustman said a receipt book seized by police during a raid showed his client, Shoue Hammoud, who has been charged with providing funds to a terrorist organisation, paid for a phone card about the same time.

The payment was made to the alleged treasurer of the Melbourne group, Ahmed Raad, from whom Mr Hammoud regularly bought international phone cards.

According to the prosecution, a secretly bugged telephone call on December 7, 2004, in which Mr Hammoud said he gave an unspecified amount of money to Mr Raad either the previous day or four days earlier, was proof he funded a terrorist organisation.

But Mr Brustman yesterday showed a Victorian Supreme Court jury one of Mr Raad's receipt books for his phone card sales business, which recorded that Mr Hammoud had paid $200 for a card on December 3, 2004.

He said the receipt book offered an alternative explanation for Mr Hammoud's comment during the bugged telephone call and raised doubts about the prosecution's version of events.

Completing his closing address to the jury, Mr Brustman raised questions about two other secretly recorded conversations the prosecution has used as evidence that Mr Hammoud was a member of a Melbourne terrorist organisation allegedly led by self-proclaimed cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 48.

In a tapped international telephone call in September 2004 Mr Hammoud, who was visiting Lebanon with his family, was warned by another alleged member of the group in Melbourne that his name might be on a list compiled by Lebanese security authorities.

But in the middle of the conversation Mr Hammoud starts telling the caller about the latest model expensive vehicles he has seen in Lebanon and how cheap cars were in Beirut.

Mr Brustman said it “absolutely defies belief” that a genuine terrorist would be so unconcerned that he would start talking about cars in the middle of such a conversation.

In another conversation with Mr Benbrika in January 2005 about rumours spreading in the Muslim community over the group's activities, Mr Hammoud was apparently so unconcerned that he suddenly started talking about fishing, Mr Brustman said.

Mr Brustman said prosecution claims that Mr Hammoud did not deny the rumours spreading in the Muslim community that Mr Benbrika's group was planning to “blow up Australia” were wrong.

He said he counted seven “vehement denials” in Mr Hammoud's January 2004 conversation with Mr Benbrika.

Mr Hammoud, Mr Benbrika and 10 other Melbourne Muslim men have pleaded not guilty to a range of terrorism charges, including knowingly belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Only three of the 12 closing defence addresses to the jury remain to be heard in the trial, which began in February and has sat for 106 days.

The hearing before Justice Bernard Bongiorno resumes on Tuesday.