The brother of Australia Test cricketer Usman Khawaja has been taken into custody by counter-terrorism police investigating the discovery in August of a laptop computer containing a purported terrorist hit-list.<\/p>\n
Arsalan Khawaja, 39, was arrested Tuesday morning after being pulled over while driving in western Sydney, according to a spokesperson for New South Wales state police.<\/p>\n
Australian media, quoting police sources, said Arsalan Khawaja was being questioned about forgery and an attempt to pervert justice.<\/p>\n
The arrest comes as Usman Khawaja prepares with the Australia squad in Adelaide ahead of Thursday’s first Test against India, the start of a crucial four-match series in which the home side could challenge India’s position as the world’s top-ranked test team.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s police operation stemmed from the discovery in an office at the University of New South Wales of a laptop which contained an alleged hit-list naming former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and his deputy Julie Bishop.<\/p>\n
The device also reportedly contained blueprints for attacks on train stations and landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House.<\/p>\n
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported police were not alleging Arsalan Khawaja intended to carry out terrorist attacks but that he tampered with the laptop to frame a colleague, 25-year-old PhD student Mohamed Nizamdeen.<\/p>\n
Nizamdeen spent four weeks in solitary confinement at Sydney’s Goulburn Supermax prison before all terrorism charges against him were dropped in October.<\/p>\n
The ABC said Arsalan Khawaja aimed to frame Nizamdeen in a dispute over a woman. Nizamdeen, speaking from his native Sri Lanka, later described the police operation which led to his arrest as “immature, embarrassing and biased.”<\/p>\n
“I am completely exonerated and I hope the media and the Sri Lankan public can help me pick up the pieces of my shattered life,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The brother of Australia Test cricketer Usman Khawaja has been taken into custody by counter-terrorism police investigating the discovery in August of a laptop computer containing a purported terrorist hit-list. Arsalan Khawaja, 39, was arrested Tuesday morning after being pulled over while driving in western Sydney, according to a spokesperson for New South Wales state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49127,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49125\/revisions\/49127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}