Foreign minister highlights threat of radicalised men from Australia in speech to the security council

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Julie Bishop has used an address to the United Nations security council to paint a terrifying picture of the young modern terrorist.



The foreign affairs minister, who chaired the security council meeting on counter-terrorism in New York on Wednesday, said there was no more pressing matter of national and international security for Australia than reducing the threat of terrorism.



“The threat from Isil, or Daesh, al-Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda affiliated groups is more dangerous, more global and more diversified than ever before,” Bishop told the meeting.



“Terrorists are younger, more violent, more innovative and highly interconnected.



“They are masters of social media to terrorise, and to recruit, and are very tech-savvy. They incite each other. They communicate their propaganda and violence directly into our homes to recruit disaffected young men and women.”

Bishop used the example of Melbourne 17-year-old Adam Dahman, “who grew up in a typical Australian household and played sport for his local high school”, and the three Succarieh brothers from Brisbane.



“Recently he [Dahman] travelled to Iraq and detonated his explosives vest in a suicide bomb attack in a Baghdad market place injuring more than 90 people,” Bishop said.



“Young people, like the three brothers from Brisbane. One became Australia’s first known suicide bomber, killing himself and 35 others at a military checkpoint in Syria. The second is currently fighting with al-Nusra. The third was stopped by Australian authorities before he got on a plane to join them.”

Representatives from the 15 security council members, along with other nations such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan, took turns in addressing the meeting.



Raimonda Murmokaite, chairwoman of the UN’s counter-terrorism committee, told the meeting some states had failed to “adequately criminalise” travel by terrorists through their territory on the way to other countries.



There were gaps in the international exchange of information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies to bring terrorists to justice, and some states did not use Interpol databases at border crossings, Murmokaite said.



Australia’s ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, also the chairman of the UN’s al-Qaeda sanctions committee, told the meeting Islamic State’s seizure of oil fields in Syria and Iraq, and the group’s ability to use smuggling routes to sell oil, was earning the group as much as $US1.65m ($1.78m) a day.



Quinlan’s committee also recommended measures to tackle terrorist groups’ ability to raise money from selling antiquities looted in Syria and Iraq.

“A comprehensive approach is needed that properly integrates UN strategies with multilateral and national action,” Quinlan said.



Australia this month took up the rotating position of president of the security council.



At the beginning of the meeting the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, praised Australia’s leadership.