“Everyone has to prepare for maximum damage”: Muslim brothers plotted jihad massacre in Australia

They lived “the bad life… which is, uh, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll,” until they turned to Islam and began plotting mass murder. They should have stuck with the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. The West persists in the mistaken notion that turning to Islam will make a person who is out of control get in control and be a better member of society. This story shows what all too often happens instead.

“‘Everyone has to prepare for maximum damage’: Inside the evil minds of two Islamic brothers who lived a life of ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ before suddenly joining ISIS and plotting to blow up buildings in Australia,” by Emily Pidgeon, Daily Mail Australia, August 4, 2018:

A pair of Islamic brothers lived a wild life of ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll’ in Melbourne before they planned horrific terror attacks on the city.

Terrorist fighter Ezzit Raad and his younger brother, Ahmed, turned to a life of radicalisation when their older brother died of disease in 2003.

Ahmed told police he and his brother had lived ‘the bad life… which is, uh, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll,’ before the pair turned to radical Islam, the Herald Sun reported.

Under Operation Pendennis, the men were jailed after one of the largest counter-terrorism investigations in Australia after 13 men were arrested in 2005 and 2006.

The siblings gained their high school certificates and embarked on trade careers but within two years, they joined forces with other family members because they believed Islam was under attack by the West.

Ezzit, who joined ISIS in 2013, and Ahmed began following Jihad with their younger sibling, Majed, and cousin Bassam Raad after falling under the influence of Muslim cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, News Corp reported.

Benbrika, who is now behind bars for his failed plot to blow up Victoria’s MCG in 2008, was creating groups in Melbourne and Sydney to punish non-believers.

The 58-year-old was secretly recorded claiming they would ‘damage buildings’ and ‘blast things’.

‘Everyone has to prepare himself. If we want to die for jihad, we have to do maximum damage, maximum damage,’ he said.

The terror plan was costly, forcing the brothers to steal cars and raise money because they believed non-Islamists would end up ‘killing (their) brothers and sisters and little kids’.

The pair were inspired by al-Qaida and had come into possession of bomb building chemicals and weapons through Benbrika.

The Benbrika-led terror cell began attending training camps allegedly run by a connection to Osama bin Laden, according to the publication.

The brothers talked to Benbrika about ‘killing police officers in pursuit of Jihad’ in April 2005 and by November, authorities swarmed the terror cell’s most dangerous fighters.

Ezzit and Ahmed spent their jail terms rubbing shoulders with underworld murders, which is thought to have strengthened their beliefs, and by 2012, the brothers were acquitted and released.

Ezzit used a fake passport and fled to fight for ISIS and died in 2016. Another brother, Mounir, is also thought to be in Syria fighting with terrorists.

His younger brother Majed was found not guilty of belonging to a homegrown terror cell and later joined Syrian terrorists. Majed is now believed to be dead.

An Islamic State propaganda magazine used the fighter’s death to terrorise the West by encouraging radicalists to ‘kill them at the MCG, SCG, the Opera House and even in their backyards’….