GLOBAL TERROR

Gunman in Australia Attack Had Been Acquitted of Terror Plot

Accused of suicide-bomb planning in Sydney in 2010.

A gunman who killed a man and took a woman hostage before killing himself near Melbourne on Monday had previously been acquitted of plotting a terror attack on an Australian army base. The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Yacqub Khayre, had been acquitted along with one other man of plotting a suicide bombing in Sydney in 2010. Khayre, a Somali refugee, was involved in a two-hour standoff with police Monday after gunning down a man at an escort agency. He then took a female hostage before barricading himself inside an apartment, as swarms of police attempted to negotiate with him. Khayre later exited the apartment and fired a shotgun at police, sparking a shootout in which three police officers were wounded. Authorities are treating the incident as a terror attack, and ISIS has claimed responsibility. Authorities said they don’t believe Khayre had accomplices, and have excluded the possibility that his actions were linked to Saturday’s attack in London. “There is nothing that we’ve found thus far that would suggest to us that this was anything that was... planned or done in concert with others,” Victoria state Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said Tuesday. A local news station said it received a phone call from a woman claiming to be involved in the hostage situation, though a man grabbed the phone and said, “This is for ISIS, this is for al Qaeda.”