Terror video man is Australian: expert

The Age:

By Ian Munro and Jesse Hogan

August 10, 2005 - 5:01PM

The two-hour al-Qaeda tape shows a multi-ethnic group of insurgents in Afghanistan, including Europeans, Arabs and other nationalities.

A masked man with an Australian accent who threatened terrorist attacks against the West on Arab television is most likely aged 18 to 30 and is a second-generation migrant, according to forensic linguist Dr Georgina Heydon.

Dr Heydon, a lecturer at Monash University, today said the man's speech suggested his parents came from a non-English speaking background, but it was not possible to say where in Australia he had lived.

ASIO and the federal police are assessing whether the video, shown on the al-Arabiya network, is genuine.

In the video, the balaclava-clad man holds a machine gun and yells threats to the camera.

The man threatens revenge on countries that have invaded predominantly Muslim nations.

"The honourable sons of Islam will not just let you kill our families in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Balkans, Indonesia ... and elsewhere," he yells, pointing towards the camera.

"It is time for us to be equals. As you kill us, you will be killed. As you bomb us, you will be bombed."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer today said the tape "looks authentic", but said this could not be confirmed until assessment of the tape by ASIO and the federal police is complete.

He did, however, concede that the man in the video could be Australian. "Bearing in mind we do have a very small number of Australians who are jihadists, who have joined the jihad movement, have trained with al-Qaeda, we can't rule it out that it is an Australian," he said.

"We'll try to identify him but first of all you know obviously you have his voice, visually he has a balaclava on so that will be extremely difficult to do but experts will be having a look at that."

Further, detailed phonetic analysis of the man's voice was possible but would take weeks to complete, Dr Heydon said.

Dr Heydon said it was generally not possible to identify which part of Australia an individual was from unless they used words distinctive to a particular region. But she identified the voice as Australian.

"I would doubt that person has been born overseas," Dr Heydon said. "He is born here, but with ethnic parents, with non-English-speaking background parents. He is young, most likely 18 to 30, but I couldn't tell you what ethnicity. I can't tell you if he's from Perth or Melbourne."

A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, Charlie McKillop, said ASIO had alerted them to the video this morning.

"We've been advised that, as you would expect, ASIO is taking a very close interest and looking carefully at the tape," Ms McKillop said.A federal police spokeswoman said the AFP would not launch an investigation until it was satisfied it was not a hoax.

"We're assessing it, but I wouldn't go so far as to say we are investigating it as yet. It's got to go through an evaluation and assessment process before it's accepted as an investigation," she said.