By LACHLAN MOORHEAD AND CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
POLICE were armed at Anzac Day services throughout Casey on Saturday as thousands of people came to honour the fallen, undaunted by an alleged terrorist plot targeting services in Melbourne’s south-east.
Only a week after details of the alleged terrorist attack surfaced, the Casey community gathered throughout Berwick, Narre Warren, Cranbourne, Pearcedale, and Tooradin to commemorate the special centenary of the Gallipoli landing.
Twenty-four hours before Anzac Day, British police charged a 14-year-old UK boy with trying to incite beheadings and attacks on Australian Anzac Day commemoration services.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London last Friday and was denied bail.
UK prosecutors said the British teenager had incited someone “to carry out an attack at an Anzac parade in Australia with the aim of killing and/or causing serious injury to people“.
“The second allegation is that on 18 March 2015, the defendant incited another person to behead someone in Australia,“ Deborah Walsh, deputy head of counter terrorism at the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, said in a statement.
The charges came after officers swooped on five Casey teenagers in morning raids on Saturday 18 April following a tip-off from British police.
A 200-strong joint state and federal police counter-terrorism team executed seven search warrants in Narre Warren, Hampton Park, Hallam and Eumemmerring as part of Operation Rising.
As a result Harun Causevic of Hampton Park and Sevdet Ramdan Besim of Hallam were charged with conspiracy to commit acts done in preparation for, or planning, terrorist acts.
A Narre Warren man, 18, is facing prohibited weapons charges. He was released on bail.
Two other Narre Warren men, aged 18 and 19, were released without charge.
Besim appeared briefly at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday 24 April and was further remanded.
He and Causevic are expected to apply for bail on Thursday 30 April.
Causevic’s lawyer Rob Stary told Channel 9 that it was inappropriate for his client, who had no criminal history, to be held in a maximum security prison.
Causevic was held by police without charge for three days under a preventative detention order at Barwon Prison.
It was the first time such an order had been exercised in Victoria.
“He should be treated in the same way as any other remand prisoner,” Mr Stary said.
“He should be housed in an appropriate remand facility, not in the state’s maximum security unit.”
Reports have linked the three charged teenagers with Springvale’s Al-Furqan Islamic Centre in Springvale South, the same centre attended by Numan Haider who stabbed police and was shot dead outside Endeavour Hills police station last year.
On Wednesday Al-Furquan announced it was permanently closing its doors.
Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed last Tuesday 21 April that it would be alleged that multiple Anzac Day services were potentially being targeted and that “edged weapons” were involved.
“That related to a specific threat to police members and by extension other members of the general public,” he said.
