Lashkar link in Aussie terror net

His lawyer has denied he was a terrorist but admitted that Ul-Haque was sympathetic to the 8216;8216;Kashmir cause8217;8217;.

Ul-Haque is said to have claimed that he left the Lashkar camp abruptly because he realised he wanted to be 8216;8216;a doctor, not a martyr8217;8217;. Authorities are not quite convinced.

As an Australian intelligence source put it, 8216;8216;This could be classic sleeper strategy. They could have told him: 8216;Go back and become a doctor, immerse yourself in their system8217; 8230; Only to activate him later.8217;8217;

There is a tricky technicality to this case. Laskhar was outlawed by the Australian government only last November. 8216;8216;Strictly speaking,8217;8217; said an Australian official, 8216;8216;at the time he was training with the group, it was not banned in this country.8217;8217;

Ul-Haque8217;s arrest led to a spate of similar measures in the Sydney area. About half a dozen people have been arrested in the past two weeks. In this period, Jack Roche, an Australian convert to Islam, has also been convicted of plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy in Canberra.

Ever since the Bali bombings in October 2002, Australian counter-terrorism efforts have been focused on Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah JI, the Indonesia-centred jihadi army whose footprint extends across southeast Asia.

Ul-Haque is said to have been recruited for Lashkar by Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Sydney man charged with seven terrorist offences and currently in a high security prison. Lodhi is accused of masterminding attempts to bomb a series of Sydney targets.

Lodhi8217;s principal co-conspirator, the police say, was Willy Brigitte, a suspected terrorist deported to France from Australia in October 2003. Now in a Paris prison, Brigitte apparently told French interoggators that he, too, trained at a Lashkar camp in Pakistan.

Brigitte further provided names of Sydney-based Lashkar operatives 8212; including at least three of Pakistani origin, one of Bangladeshi origin and one of Lebanese origin. One of these was ul-Haque.

Interestingly, David Hicks 8212; arrested fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, and one of two Australians being held by the Americans at their Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba 8212; is 8216;8216;also thought to have trained with Lashkar8217;8217;, according to Australian newspaper reports.

Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior Australian counter-terrorism official said, 8216;8216;We are detecting signs of Lashkar showing interest in southeast Asia. We are concerned by the links Lashkar may be establishing with JI. For instance, we know of a JI cell in Karachi.8217;8217;

Malik travelled to Australia on the invitation of the Australian government8217;s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade