{"id":287157,"date":"2016-12-25T00:21:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-24T23:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/melbourne-christmas-day-terror-averted\/"},"modified":"2016-12-25T00:21:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-24T23:21:00","slug":"melbourne-christmas-day-terror-averted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/melbourne-christmas-day-terror-averted\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne: Christmas Day Terror Averted"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<p>Police in Melbourne, Australia, have arrested five Muslims\u2014four Australian-born Lebanese, and one Egyptian-born, all legal immigrants\u2014for planning a series of massive attacks in the city on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The plan\u2014described as the \u201cmost substantial plot\u201d in Australian history\u2014included targeting several well-known sites in the city to cause death and destruction on December 25.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2016-12-23\/police-foil-alleged-christmas-day-%27terrorist-plot%27-in-melbourne\/8143762\" target=\"_blank\">Police in Victoria were involved in joint counterterrorism raids<\/a> in Melbourne\u2019s north-west where five search warrants were executed as part of \u201cOperation Kastelholm,\u201d which also involved the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In total, seven nonwhites were arrested, and police say that a core group of four\u2014the Lebanese\u2014intended to carry out an attack in Melbourne\u2019s central business district \u201cinvolving explosives and other weapons\u201d on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Victoria Police Commissioner Graham Ashton told media that the investigation had been running for a couple of weeks but said those arrested had been \u201cpersons of interest for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The identified targets included high profile locations around Federation Square and the surrounding area, including Swanston, Flinders, and Russell Streets, Flinders Street Station, and St Paul\u2019s Cathedral.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So far, three of the Lebanese have been named: Abdullah Chaarani, 26, of Dallas; Hamza Abbas, 21, of Flemington, and Ahmed Mohamad, 24, of Meadow Heights, all of whom have&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/redice.tv\/news\/melbourne-christmas-day-terror-averted\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Police in Melbourne, Australia, have arrested five Muslims\u2014four Australian-born Lebanese, and one Egyptian-born, all legal immigrants\u2014for planning a series of massive attacks in the city on Christmas Day. The plan\u2014described as the \u201cmost substantial plot\u201d in Australian history\u2014included targeting several well-known sites in the city to cause death and destruction on December 25. Police in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}