The suspects were seized in dawn raids by officers from the country’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team less than two weeks after a man was killed in Australia’s second-largest city in what police said was an act of terrorism. Hanifi Halis, 21, Samed Erikioglu, 26 and Ertunc Erikioglu, 30, have all been charged with planning a terrorist act. They are all Australian citizens and their passports were cancelled earlier this year. Police said the three men had been inspired by Islamic State rather than being directed by the militant group.
Graham Ashton, Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, said: “We now have sufficient evidence to act in relation to preventing a terrorist attack.”
He said the suspects had not decided where to carry out their planned attack but believed it was imminent.
He said: ”They were certainly looking at a place of mass gathering, where there would be crowds.
“They were trying to focus on trying to have a place where they could kill as many people as possible.”
Police are are now combing through 17,000 intercepted phone calls and 10,500 messages exchanged between the group as part of evidence collected during their arrests.
They said it would take several months to transcribe the calls and messages.
Australia, a staunch US ally that sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East or their supporters.
The likelihood of a militant attack there is ranked “probable”, the midpoint on a five-level system.
Police said the three men were known to authorities and their passports were cancelled because of concerns they would travel to a conflict zone overseas.
The arrests came less than two weeks after a man set fire to a pickup truck laden with gas cylinders in the centre of Melbourne and stabbed three people, killing one, before he was shot by police.
Police said the three suspects did not have any links to the man responsible for the November 9 attack but had stepped up their planning in the aftermath of that assault.
Commissioner Ashton said: ”Certainly over the last week they’ve become energised about doing something more quickly.”
Police said the suspects had been using encrypted messaging apps to communicate, which an Australian government minister said was further evidence of the need to amend the law.
Australia proposed a law earlier this year that would require companies such as Facebook and Apple to provide access to private encrypted data linked to suspected illegal activities.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said: “We have people now who are swapping messages using encrypted messaging apps. The police are blind to those messages.”