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| Down Under |
| Australia identifies masked gunman as ex-army soldier |
| 2005-08-11 |
| FORMER army private Mathew Stewart has emerged as the chief suspect in the hunt for the masked terrorist with an Australian accent. Stewart left home four years ago to fight alongside Osama bin Laden and has not been seen since. Australian Federal Police officers immediately identified Stewart as the probable hooded figure who appeared in a terror video aired on Arab TV this week. They questioned his distraught mother Vicki Stewart who - after looking at a still image from the video - denied the heavily armed man was her missing son. But one of Stewart's close friends, Adam Miechel, said he believed the self-declared terrorist on the video was the man he grew up with in Mooloolaba, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. "My first thought was, 'Yeah, it even sounds like him'," Mr Miechel told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "It looks like him. It sounds like him as well." Stewart made headlines when he allegedly fled Australia to fulfil his dream of living in Afghanistan and fighting alongside the Taliban. US forces reportedly found documents identifying Stewart as an al-Qaeda recruit during a raid on a terrorist training camp in late 2002. Intelligence agencies believe he made the decision to fight against US and Australian forces after returning from a tour of duty in East Timor, which caused him to have a mental breakdown and led to him being discharged from the army on psychological grounds. Vicki Stewart was too distressed to speak yesterday and took the day off work to deal with the authorities. A family spokesman released a statement confirming that police were treating her missing son as a suspect. "She [Mrs Stewart] has been contacted by the federal police and has been shown photographs by officers and advised them that the person in the photograph was definitely not Mathew Stewart," the spokesman said. "The family is still grieving for Mathew, who disappeared four years ago without a trace. "The family supports the work that the federal police are doing in this matter." Mr Miechel said he felt uncomfortable talking about the matter because he was concerned fresh talk Stewart was alive would upset his family. In a tragic twist, it is understood Stewart's parents held a small funeral service - without a body - for their son. "His mum has buried him," Mr Miechel said. While Stewart's family denied the man seen brandishing an automatic rifle on the video was Stewart, police are treating him as their main suspect. Stewart is one of a handful of Australians believed to have travelled to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban in the lead-up to al-Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001. Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib were picked up on terrorism charges and held by the US, but Stewart and another unidentified man, from Melbourne, were never found. In a revealing interview last year, Mrs Stewart spoke of her son's depression and her belief that he was dead. "I couldn't have loved him any more than I loved him," she said. Intelligence agents were last night still analysing the video, anonymously sent to Arab TV network Al-Arabiya. In a two-minute diatribe against Western values, the masked gunman called on the US and Britain to withdraw troops from Iraq or face the consequences. "As you kill us, you'll be killed. As you bomb us, you will be bombed," the militant said. |
| Posted by:Oztralian [AKA] God Save The World |
| #3 she's written him off. Kill him. Finish expectations. POS |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-11 22:28 |
| #2 I knew it wouldn't take long to ID the Aussie. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-08-11 21:37 |
| #1 B-U-S-T-E-D!!!!! |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-08-11 21:01 |