Well done Bunnings

Stuff reports:

It was staff at Bunnings who alerted police after a young man made an unusual purchase in December 2016.

He bought 700 nail gun cartridges packed with gunpowder, that were kept behind a locked counter, and the hardware superstore without buying anything else.

Staff were so suspicious that one of them trailed the man out into the Broadmeadows store carpark on Pearcedale Parade to take down the registration details of his sedan and raise the alarm.

It turned out federal police were already watching his every move as they began unravelling what could have been one of the most deadly homegrown attacks on Australian shores.

The buyer was Ahmed Mohamed. Then aged in his early 20s, he had grown up in Melbourne's outer suburbs and was living a normal suburban life in Hallam with his wife and a baby boy on the way.

But underneath that veneer of normality, Mohamed and three of his friends were living a secret double life.

On November 2, a Supreme jury found Mohamed, 26, Abdullah Chaarani, 28, and Chaarani's cousin, 23-year-old Hamza Abbas, guilty of planning to carry out a mass bombing attack which was also to have featured knives and guns on or around Christmas Day 2016 in Melbourne's CBD.

Scores may have died. Tragedy averted thanks to Bunnings, the security services and the Police.

Ibrahim Abbas told the court he was motivated to become a martyr as it offered him a fast-track ticket to “paradise” – a perceived Islamic heaven he said other Muslims only reached when the world ended.

Mohamed and Ibrahim Abbas were also prepared to use their own family members as unwitting weapons and were secretly recorded by police discussing strapping their siblings and wives into suicide vests as they fine-tuned plans for their Islamic State-inspired attack.

Charming.

At the corner of Dandenong and Springvale roads on December 22, 2016, guns were drawn as Victoria Police's Special Operations Group demanded Mohamed and Chaarani crawl on hands and knees from a red sedan.

Their reign of imminent terror had finally ceased.

“Go ahead martyr me. I welcome death,” Chaarani chanted.

“You [police] will have your day soon. Praise Allah, you can't stop us all.”

Mohamed, Chaarani and Hamza Abbas are due to be sentenced in coming weeks.

Hopefully a very long sentence.

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