Australian counter-terror officer shoots man dead

A forensic officer documents objects including a blanket at the scene of a fatal shooting at Endeavour Hills Police Station in Melbourne, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. A suspected terrorist was shot dead and two counterterrorism police were stabbed Tuesday in a confrontation in Australia’s second largest city that some experts suspect is inspired by the Islamic State group’s call to supporters to wage terror in their home countries. AP/AAP Image, Julian Smith

• Australian crackdown on terror suspects continues

CANBERRA, Australia — A suspected terrorist was shot dead and two counterterrorism police were stabbed Tuesday in a confrontation in Australia’s second largest city that some experts suspect is inspired by the Islamic State group’s call to supporters to wage terror in their home countries.

An Australian Federal Police officer and a Victoria state police officer who were part of a Joint Counter Terrorism Team had asked the 18-year-old man to come to a police station in southeast Melbourne in relation to a routine matter in an investigation when the violence erupted outside the station, Victoria state police Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius said.

The two police officers were stabbed before one of the officers shot the man dead, Cornelius said. He declined to release the man’s name.

“Our members had no inkling that this individual posed a threat to them and as far as we were concerned, it was going to be an amicable discussion about that individual’s behavior,” Cornelius told reporters on Wednesday, adding that the officer had “no choice” but to shoot.

Both police officers were taken to a hospital.

“It appears this individual was acting on his own and was not acting in concert with other individuals,” Cornelius said. “It’s our belief at this stage that this is an isolated incident.”

Justice Minister Michael Keenan, who is responsible for the federal police, said the federal officer was in serious but stable condition. The state police officer’s condition was stable.

Keenan described the dead man as “a known terror suspect who was a person of interest to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

The stabbing was unprovoked and the shooting appeared to be in self defense, Keenan said.

Keenan said he had briefed Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has travelled to New York to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting on the problem of 15,000 foreign fighters who are in Iraq and Syria.

“Whilst this is a horrible incident, we do need to stay calm and go about our daily lives,” Keenan told reporters. He refused to take questions, citing an ongoing investigation into the tragedy.

Onlookers said the dead man had been shouting insults about Abbott and the Australian government in general in the moments before he was shot, The Age newspaper reported.

Australian Federal Police Commander Bruce Giles said reports that the deceased man had earlier been waving an Islamic State flag were being investigated.

A statement issued by Islamic State group spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani and made public this week asked Muslims to use all means to kill a “disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian or a Canadian” or any disbeliever and others whose countries have joined to try to disable and destroy the group.

Australian National University Professor of National Security Michael Wesley blamed the statement for the attack.

“It’s probably an indication that the people who are radicalized in Australia are prepared to strike out quite violently and to do so in ways that really give no thought to their personal safety,” Wesley said.

“I think that this attack occurring in the context of the fatwa that came out earlier this week, a fatwa that implored followers to attack infidels and ask no one’s permission, thereby really an incitement to lone-wolf attacks — I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all,” he added.

The Islamic Council of Victoria state, a leading Muslim group, said in a statement the tragedy highlighted the need to deal with the root causes of alienation and disaffection of people like the man killed.

Earlier this month, Australia raised its terror warning to the second-highest level in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State group. Last week, police detained 16 people in counterterrorism raids in Sydney and charged one with conspiring with an Islamic State movement leader in Syria to kidnap and behead a randomly selected person. Another man faces a lesser weapons charge; the rest were released.

Abbott warned Tuesday that Australians who fight with the Islamic State group in the Middle East will be “jailed for a very long time” when they return home under a proposed law that would make it an offense to simply visit terrorism hot spots abroad.

Abbott’s government is to introduce the proposed law to Parliament on Wednesday. The legislation is designed to make it easier to prosecute Australian jihadists when they return home from Mideast battlefields and carries sentences of up to life in prison.

At least 60 Australians were fighting in Iraq and Syria with the Islamic State group and another al-Qaida offshoot, Jabhat al-Nursa, also known as the Nusra Front, the prime minister said.

More than 60 Australian would-be fighters had their passports canceled on secret service advice to prevent them from flying to the Mideast, he said.

Dozens of suspected fighters have already returned to Australia from the battlefields. Security agencies fear they now pose a domestic terrorist threat.