Terror-Free for Years, Australia Confronts Extremists

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Australian Islamic radicals have been recruiting militants among Australia's small Muslim community, and several have risen to prominence in Iraq's and Syria's war zones, said Thomas Joscelyn, a terrorism analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

One known extremist preacher from Australia, Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir, has become a senior al-Qaeda official embedded with the Syrian rebel Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusrah, Joscelyn said.

There is no sign that al-Mujahir's terrorist group is behind the apparent terrorist incident in Sydney, where police have identified a lone Iranian cleric as the hostage-taker in a cafe.

“There's nothing on his (al-Mujahir's) Twitter feed that has to do with the hostage-taking so far,” Joscelyn said. “But there's a significant network of recruiting to fight with both the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusrah” in Iraq and Syria. “They've been sending people from Australia at least a couple of years.”
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