On a quiet property just outside the NSW town of Young, unemployed electrician Haisem Zahab was hard at work — designing battlefield weapons systems for Islamic State.
Incredible photos released by the NSW Supreme Court show the father of six testing rockets in his backyard, computer simulations of his designs for rockets with the ISIS flag printed on them, and an elaborate device he constructed to help the terrorist group detect incoming missiles.
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A still image showing a rocket with the ISIS flag from a computer rocket simulation found on Haisem Zehab’s hard drive. Image: NSW Supreme Court
The images are contained in an agreed set of facts, which was released after 44-year-old Zahab pleaded guilty to providing support to a terrorist organisation — a charge which carries up to 25 years in jail.
Haisem Zehab is photographed in his backyard, preparing for the launch of a hobby rocket in 2015. Image: NSW Supreme Court
Zahab was arrested in 2017, when federal police officers swarmed his small hobby farm in the early hours of the morning.
It followed an 18-month investigation into members of Zahab’s family who had left Australia to participate in the Syrian civil war.
From mid-2014 Zahab began using Twitter to share ISIS memes and propaganda and sent messages to other supporters of the terrorist group using encrypted messaging apps.
Six months later, he started researching laser-guided weapons online, and eventually narrowed his focus to a battlefield laser warning receiver — a device which can sound an alarm when it detects incoming laser-guided munitions.
He used a 3D printer to make a case for the device, attached wires, toggles and switches and built the detailed circuitry inside.
By February 2015, he had completed a 288-page report summarising his work, which he forwarded on to an ISIS contact overseas for feedback.
Components of the “laser warning receiver” Haisem Zehab designed and built for Islamic State. Image: NSW Supreme Court
A message recovered from Zahab’s computer captured part of his communication.
“I’m just waiting on more feedback after the techies look at it,” he wrote.
“I managed to put a prototype together with a single sensor.”
“(I) tested it with a remote transmitter i had here and it worked fine. :)”
Over the following months, Zahab continued refining his design and the device and recorded a 57-minute video showing his schematics, with Islamic State music playing in the background.
Haisem Zahab in the NSW Supreme Court. Sketch: Vincent de Gou
By June 2015, Zahab had switched his focus to rockets — which Islamic State fighters were starting to manufacture on a sophisticated scale.
After using the internet to research rocket propellant, he began testing hobby rockets in his backyard.
He made videos and took photos of his endeavours — images police would later recover.
Haisem Zahab filmed the launch of a hobby rocket in his backyard near Young, NSW in October 2015. Image: NSW Supreme Court
Zahab then began designing several different rockets and used a computer simulation program to test their capabilities.
One of the designs was for a six-metre rocket, named ‘Maghrebi’, which featured the Islamic State flag painted onto the weapon.
One of the rockets Zahab designed, featuring an Islamic State flag. Image: NSW Supreme Court
In August 2015, police phone taps recorded Zahab contacting an eBay seller from whom he’d purchased a rocket launch set.
He asked whether the set came with “A3 4TS engines”, telling the seller, it was “for his son who was really ‘into space’ and who just wanted to do experiments with his dad”.
A handwritten diagram found on an external hard drive belonging to Haisem Zehab. Image: NSW Supreme Court
When police raided his property and asked about the equipment, he told them “me and my son were thinking about doing a laser tag game”.
Zahab has also pleaded guilty to failing to unlock several of his electronic devices.
He’s expected to be sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday
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Achmed Mohandjob
4 years ago
Sentence? “Time Served”. Any takers? I’m giving odds.
heat wave
4 years ago
Who else in the whole world is so preoccupied with killing and maiming? There is enough trouble to be had in life, without causing unnecessary hardship and misery and death, for no sane reason.
islam is NOT a religion of peace, a race nor one of peace!
islam is a sick and twisted terrorist ideology that is completely incompatible with western civilization!
Deport all muslims, CITIZENS OR NOT, from the west at once!
Ban all muslims from traveling to the west, …FOREVER!
Implement muslim control, NOT gun control!
Defending your person, your family, your country from attack and invasion from those forcing a violent, terrorist, genocidal ideology on western civilization…is …not … islamophobia ….or racist. ….It is just common sense.
The people of Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Britain and Canada must throw down their treasonous leaders forcing this evil upon them. The USA just did, Nov. 2016!
The West does NOT need to allow thousands of backward, 7th century, unvetted and violent muslim savages into our countries that have ‘enshrined’ sexual slavery, rape, forced conversion, assault, murder and genocide in their FAKE religion!
Really? What else do you want him to do? Let’s see he’s tried to enforce immigration and test all immigrants wanting to come in from muslim lands but the obstructionist and the libturd judges keep interfering with the LAW. So do tell how naive Trump is of the threat. He has to fight the Houses and courts every time he attempts to protect Americans!!!!
In 1807, a one-sentence statute enacted on the very last day of the Ninth Congress (and signed into law, more than a little ironically, by President Thomas Jefferson) provided that the president could use federal regulars—the standing army of which the Founders had feared—in most of the circumstances in which resort to the militia had already been authorized.
Numerous statutory tweaks followed, but the structural features remained the same.
Under the Insurrection Act as it stands today:
“Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
In other words, if the president determines that ordinary law enforcement is inadequate to enforce federal law, he can deploy the military to assist. And although Congress in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibited use of the federal military for domestic law enforcement, the Insurrection Act was always understood as the principal exception to that general rule.
As documented in a comprehensive three-volume history by the U.S. Army’s Center for Military History, the Insurrection Act has therefore been used repeatedly throughout American history to help quell civil unrest—especially before the rise of well-trained (and increasingly well-equipped) modern local police forces. In virtually every case, the act was used in circumstances in which there was no serious dispute that local authorities were inadequate to the task at hand, and where domestic deployment of federal troops was seen as a means of restoring civil and civilian order, not subverting it.
I understand that federal troops can’t be used to enforce State Laws but to use them to enforce federal domestic law enforcement isn’t forbidden. As stated: The Posse Comitatus Act is the United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 United States Statutes at Large 152) that was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction and was updated in 1981. Its intent (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) was to limit the powers of Federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce the state laws.
Enforcing immigration is federal and I totally support Trump using troops but no way will it happen. Screw the NG if they are pulled by the Governors. The way I understood it is IF the President activated the NG then they fall under federal control not state and by that the funding is federal not state. The biggest problem for the past two years is Trump can try to do anything and the obstructionist have interfered with everything he tries. Even if the dumocraps kept claiming they wanted it done in the past.
Congress and the District courts have NO STANDING over a executive branch national security matter.
Idiot Trump fails to use his Constitutional Commander In Chief powers and plays the fool to a leftist Congress and District Courts when he does not have to.
The SCOTUS would back Trump up, but the fool will not go there.
Well, if you are from the libturd land of seattle you shouldn’t be calling Trump the idiot….and doesn’t mean that you are correct as he has many advisers. Maybe put blame where it is deserved as each time he makes a move in either direction the ignorant libturds attack and obstruct…period. Still better than the POS anti-American muslim perverted libturd any day!
You do talk a lot without saying anything pertinent to the conversation and yet you feel that you are the intelligent one. Damn can’t fix STUPID with libturds can we? Want to see irrelevant then look into any mirror.
Moderate muslims, Radical Islamic Terrorists …Radical islam …Muslim Extremists?
…No! Just muslims implementing islam.
The real “Radical Muslim Extremists” are the ones that do NOT attack, murder, rape infidels or support those that do. But that civilized act puts themselves in danger of attack from uncivilized muslims, for Apostasy.
Apostasy in Islam (Arabic: ردة riddah or ارتداد irtidād) is commonly defined as the conscious abandonment of Islam by a Muslim in word or through deed. The definition of apostasy from Islam and its appropriate punishment(s) are controversial, and they vary among Islamic scholars and Islamic schools of thought.
The punishment for apostasy from Islam is a controversial topic for Muslims living in the West and for ex-Muslims everywhere. That’s because Islam teaches that apostates are to be killed. We know from historic Islamic documents that during Muhammad’s lifetime, and the lifetimes of the next four “Rightly Guided Caliphs”, tens of thousands of Muslims left the faith of Islam and thousands were killed. On a large scale the Muslims made war on groups that chose to leave Islam and massacres of apostates occurred. On a smaller scale individual apostates were executed. This death sentence is in effect whether or not the apostasy occurred in or out of the Islamic state.
Many Muslims living in Islamic countries have no problem with the rule of putting apostates to death. The examples of Robert Hussein[1] of Kuwait, Abdul Rahman[2] of Afghanistan, and Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad[3] of Egypt come to mind. These ugly Muslim governments are succored by the West’s finances and blood while they impose an imperial and brutal religion upon its citizens.
On the other hand, Muslims living in the West are embarrassed by this death sentence. The West values the freedoms of thought and speech, Islam does not, and these virtues have never blossomed under Islamic rule. Consequently, when asked about the Islamic law for apostates many Western Muslims do their best to cover up Islam’s edict. Motivated by conviction, or shame, they make up various defenses and say whatever they can to put your mind at ease and make Islam more acceptable to a naïve, gullible, and ignorant Western audience.
>>> The way around that little Catch 22, …is to lie.
Taqiyya is an Islamic doctrine that allows Muslims to deceive non-Muslims. As in lie to them. Dr. Sami Mukaram, author of Taqiyya in Islam, writes: “Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it…
>>> Former President Obama expertly practices Taqiyya. That is why he was not condemned to death for Apostasy for renouncing islam, for saying he is a Christian.
And why would you? Reporting it might cause islamophobia and anti-Muslim backlash. And it would be wrong for patriotic Aussies to object to an Islamic invasion… err… peaceful Muslim migrants.
It’s not islamophobia when they really do want to kill you.
The threats posed by Islam and its adherents are quite real. Phobias are irrational. Nothing irrational about fearing an sick ideology that seeks to destroy the Judeo-Christian civilization that your ancestors have been building for 3000 years.
Agreed… I should have put Islamophobia in quotes as well as the mythical anti-Muslim backlash.
There’s a reason why they make the threats and the threats are real… there’s a reason why Muslims who resort to using violence quote their Islamic scriptures to justify their actions. And it’s no coincidence that so many Muslims interpret the Islamic scriptures in the same way and come to the same conclusions about what the Islamic scriptures teaches and prescribes as well as the “right” response to those scriptures for a devout follower… and so they obey… as PG says… it’s Islamorealism! Embrace it at your own peril.
Unemployed? another welfare parasite trying to destroy the system that feeds him. I know what I would do with him.
ed
4 years ago
Yup….and pictures….and….there’s the beard.
Alleged-Comment
4 years ago
Better he became proficient in English grammar. What is this “ME and my son“???
Tom Validakis
4 years ago
#CLOCKBOY
Steven
4 years ago
That’s odd.. I live in Australia and I never heard of that news ….never in the newspapers!!!
jerrys
4 years ago
So this unemployed moslem with six offspring and how many wives? Has the excess welfare funds to pursue his hobby of making offensive rockets? Moslems of all ages and sex’s should be exterminated or at least neutered Its a kindness to our pets to have them fixed or we would be inundated with unwanted ones.
ninetyninepct
4 years ago
He might be invited to New Zealand to set up a manufacturing plant.
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
4 years ago
I wouldn’t mind the muslum parasite playing w/his solid rocket propellants — in his mosque, with his family and friends present.
jerrys
4 years ago
Wouldn’t it be lovely to hear that one of his rockets ignited in his face and set that filthy beard afire!
There’s a saying… if you play with fire, you should expect to get burned.
It seems to me a more fitting experience for him would be if a bomb he was building blew him up prematurely, like while he was building it, so he could get first hand experience at the effectiveness of his design.
disqus_E5omamma
4 years ago
ISIS do not need this fool to give them plans. ISIS have Obama trained politicians who are giving them missiles for free.
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
4 years ago
I remember a decades ago reading that Mossad sold some muslum terrorists w/grenades that had a really short fuse — it would explode the second it left one’s hand. Maybe when this muslum parasite is released someone could sell him some deliberately defective rocket engines.
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