Radical preacher back in Melbourne after deportation from Philippines
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Version 0 of 1. Radical Islamic preacher Robert “Musa” Cerantonio has arrived in Melbourne after being deported from the Philippines. Cerantonio, who was under surveillance by Philippines police for five months before his arrest two weeks ago, landed at Melbourne airport early on Monday morning and was met by Australian federal police (AFP) officers. The AFP said Cerantonio, an outspoken supporter of the militia group Islamic State (Isis), was “spoken to in relation to a number of issues”, but the preacher was allowed to walk free shortly after. “Mr Cerantonio's known social media postings are considered offensive and disturbing, however, have been assessed as not breaching Australian law to this point,” an AFP spokeswoman said. “The AFP will continue to monitor and assess this material for any breaches of Australian law into the future.” Police said the Philippine authorities deported Cerantonio because his travel documents were invalid. He was arrested on the island of Cebu on 11 July, along with with a Filipina woman claiming to be his wife, days after announcing on Twitter that he had arrived in Syria to support the “caliphate” established by IS fighters. In April, researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in London found Melbourne-born Cerantonio was among the most influential of a “new set of new spiritual authorities" who used social media to cheerlead for jihad and persuade young men to join the conflict in Syria and Iraq. In one post from December on his Facebook page, which has since been banned by the social network company, Cerantonio called for the assassination of US leaders. "If we see that Muslims are being killed by the tyrant leaders of the USA then we must first stop them with our hands (ie by force). This means that we should stop them by fighting them, by assassinating their oppressive leaders, by weakening their offensive capabilities etc … This is not something that is beyond us at all," he wrote. Cerantonio grew up in a Catholic Irish-Italian family in Melbourne’s west, before converting to Islam at the age of 17. Professor Greg Barton, a Monash University terrorism specialist, said it would have been “genuinely hard to construct a prosecution case against [Cerantonio] based on the evidence currently available”. He said Cerantonio would have “sailed awfully close to the wind” with his online support for Isis, but because he had been outside Australia for so long prosecution might be harder. Australian authorities would have warned the preacher to stay offline and would be watching him closely, Barton said. |