source:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23550088-12377,00.html
A WOULD-BE terrorist who conversed with birds also lived in a luxury
three-storey beachfront home, drove a BMW, had a carer and a butler,
regularly called telephone *** lines and masqueraded as a high-rolling
gambler, a Melbourne court heard today.
Izzydeen Atik, 28, also claimed to be a "good Muslim" who wanted to
join a Melbourne terrorist organisation which, he said, had plans to
bomb the MCG on AFL grand final day.
A Victorian Supreme Court jury heard Atik hadn't done a day's work in
six years when he moved into a beachfront villa at Williamstown in
Melbourne's south-west in 2005, funding his lifestyle through credit
card fraud.
He told the court he occupied the palatial home by himself, except for
his brother, who fraudulently collected a carer's pension from
Centrelink in return for looking after him, and the butler who
ultimately replaced the brother.
Atik is a key prosecution witness in the trial of 12 men who have
pleaded not guilty in Australia's largest-ever terror trial.
Having told the court yesterday of the group's intended targets,
including the MCG and Crown Casino, Atik repeatedly claimed memory
loss today when cross-examined about psychological treatment he had
received over several years in Sydney.
Defence counsel Remy Van de Wiel, QC, told the court Atik had a
history of hearing voices in his head and had claimed to communicate
with birds.
But under cross-examination today, he told the jury he had no
recollection of the voice he knew as "Andrew" or of an imaginary
female he described to doctors as a "devil".
The court heard, however, that Atik had given evidence in court
proceedings last year of his encounters with "Andrew".
Mr Van de Wiel, counsel for alleged terror group leader Abdul Nacer
Benbrika, read to the court from a 2002 psychiatric re****t in which
Atik claimed birds often told him their problems.
"If you spend a day with me you will see the birds follow me and talk
to me," Atik allegedly told the psychiatrist who compiled the re****t.
The court also heard Atik had moved away from his family in Sydney
after problems arose between him and relatives over his desire to
marry his 16-year-old cousin.
Soon after arriving in Melbourne in 2003, he accompanied another
cousin on a pilgrimage to Mecca, returning to Australia a "changed
man" intent on rejecting a criminal past that included several
convictions for credit card fraud.
But after meeting one of the alleged terror cell members at his local
mosque, Atik was asked to use his experience to fund their plans for
violent jihad.
After receiving an assurance in the form of a "fatwah" from Benbrika
that stealing from non-believers was permitted by Islam, he resumed
the credit card racket using the proceeds to fund the terror group and
maintain his extravagant lifestyle.
He told the court he paid taxi drivers to provide him with credit card
details obtained from their passengers which he then used to buy
hundreds of airline tickets and mobile phone SIM cards.
The airline tickets were then sold to friends and acquaintances who
paid $100 for an economy class return ticket to anywhere in Australia
and $200 for business class.
The jury also heard a secretly-recorded telephone call Atik made to a
*** chat line in which he offered to fly the woman at the other end of
the line to Melbourne to "make me happy".
The trial before Justice Bernard Bongiorno continues tomorrow.
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