Islamist ex-baggage handler jailed for terror book

IT was a book called Provisions on the Rules of Jihad, a passionate justification of holy war complete with a step-by-step guide to assassinations and bomb-making. Its author, former Qantas baggage cabin cleaner Belal Saadallah Khazaal, compiled the document and put it on a website with links to al-Qa'ida, in the hope of reaching a wider and more radicalised audience.

Yesterday, five years after he was charged, Khazaal was jailed for a maximum of 12 years, with a minimum sentence of nine years, by a NSW Supreme Court judge who said the crime was close to the worst category of offending. Arrested in 2004, Khazaal was charged with two offences -- making a document knowing it could assist in a terrorist act and inciting terrorism.

In September last year, he was convicted of the first offence and became only the second person convicted under Australia's tough new anti-terrorism laws. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the second count.

In her judgment yesterday, judge Megan Latham said the book, which suggested high-ranking Western politicians as assassination targets, and advocated widespread and indiscriminate loss of life, serious injury and serious property damage within the countries identified as enemies of Islam. "It beggars belief that a person of average intelligence who had devoted themselves to the study of Islam over a period of some years would fail to register the nature of the material."