{"id":80667,"date":"2018-09-03T12:30:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T19:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=80667"},"modified":"2018-09-03T12:30:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T19:30:03","slug":"student-accused-of-affiliations-to-is-has-uncle-in-sri-lankan-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/09\/03\/student-accused-of-affiliations-to-is-has-uncle-in-sri-lankan-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Student accused of affiliations to IS has uncle in Sri Lankan government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

A University of New South Wales student accused of documenting plans in a notebook to assassinate two senior Australian politicians is the nephew of a Sri Lankan cabinet minister.<\/p>\n

The ABC can reveal Mohamed Nizamdeen, 25, is related to Sri Lankan MP Faiszer Musthapha, who is the country\u2019s Sports and Local Government Minister.<\/p>\n

The PhD student, who was on Friday charged with a terrorism-related offence, is also the grandson of Jehan Kamer Cassim, the late former chairman of one of Sri Lanka\u2019s biggest banks \u2014 Bank of Ceylon.<\/p>\n

Mr Nizamdeen, who also worked as a UNSW business systems analyst, was arrested at the Kensington campus last Thursday.<\/p>\n

His arrest came after a colleague found a notebook allegedly containing details of plans to kill former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and his deputy Julie Bishop.<\/p>\n

The alleged list of targets also included the former speaker Bronwyn Bishop, the Sydney Opera House, major train stations and police stations across the harbour city.<\/p>\n

On Friday police told a media conference Mr Nizamdeen appeared to be an Islamic State affiliate.<\/p>\n

Sydney was \u2018extremely opening\u2019<\/p>\n

His brother Mithra De Alwis today defended his sibling on Facebook, describing him as an open minded Muslim\u201d who he believed was innocent.<\/p>\n

He would have had absolutely no reason to engage in such disgusting, hateful crimes to a city, which has been extremely opening to him for the past six years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He has not been able to communicate with any one of us back home and we are simply broken and deeply affected by this unnecessary turn of events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plain-clothed detectives seized computers, mobile phones and documents from Mr Nizamdeen\u2019s inner-city apartment at Zetland on Friday before conducting further raids on university grounds.<\/p>\n

Police allege Mr Nizamdeen, who does not have any criminal history in Australia, was operating by himself, but do not believe he was capable of carrying out a terror attack.<\/p>\n

The commerce graduate was one of the faces of UNSW\u2019s Hero Program and had worked as a business systems analyst since 2016, where he helped develop several projects aimed at stopping identity theft.<\/p>\n

While his student visa is due to expire at the end of this month, the Australian Federal Police have applied for a Criminal Justice Stay visa so they can prosecute him in Australia.<\/p>\n

If convicted, Mr Nizamdeen could face up to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n

Source: ABC
\n-Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Adaderana A University of New South Wales student accused of documenting plans in a notebook to assassinate two senior Australian politicians is the nephew of a Sri Lankan cabinet minister. The ABC can reveal Mohamed Nizamdeen, 25, is related to Sri Lankan MP Faiszer Musthapha, who is the country\u2019s Sports and Local Government Minister. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}