...............The president of the peak organisation for Muslims in Australia is being accused of inappropriately using $100,000. .................

The president of the umbrella ­organisation which represents Muslims in Australia, Hafez Kassem, is being accused of inappropriately using $100,000 of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ funding on his own lawyers, and rampantly spending its money while on overseas trips.

Concerns about unauthorised spending and decision-making by AFIC’s executive have also led to the resignation of the organisation’s treasurer, Usaid Khalil.

The latest spending disclosures come as the federal government investigates the six schools which AFIC runs around the country, and claims AFIC is profiting from taxpayer funds distributed for education purposes.

AFIC runs Malek Fahd Islamic College in NSW, the Islamic College of Canberra, Langford College in Western Australia, the Islamic College of Brisbane, the ­Islamic College of South Australia and the Islamic College of Melbourne.

The federal and South Australian governments suspended funding to the Islamic College of SA over concerns about its administration, use of funding and education standards eight days ago, before reinstating it on Wednesday. AFIC insiders have also been concerned about payments from its own accounts to others, and The Weekend Australian has seen banking documents that show Mr Kassem paid Mitry Lawyers $100,000 from AFIC accounts on November 4. The Weekend Australian has also obtained copies of reimbursement claims lodged by Mr Kassem from a trip to Indonesia for a halal conference in September, which includes $3500 for seven days of income while he was there, $180 for seat selection for flights, and $798 for food spent in one day in Canberra in October.

NSW state chairman Amjad Mehboob, who is on the federal executive, said Mr Kassem had breached the organisation’s constitution by withdrawing the $100,000 legal payment from AFIC’s accounts without approval..

BELGIAN police have arrested two people suspected of plotting attacks against landmarks in Brussels during New Year celebrations, prosecutors said.

The federal prosecutor’s office in Brussels, the home of the European Union, said police seized military-style uniforms and Islamic State propaganda in the raids on Sunday and Monday.

But investigators said the police action was not linked to the wave of deadly attacks in Paris in November which France says were prepared in Belgium.

One of the two was arrested on suspicion of planning attacks as well as “playing a lead role in the activities of a terrorist group and recruiting for terrorist acts,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The second faced charges of planning and “participating in the activities of a terrorist group,” it said.

“The investigation cast a light on serious threats of attacks believed to be aimed at several emblematic sites in Brussels and which would be carried out during the end-of-year celebrations.” The suspects were arrested during raids in the Brussels area, in Flemish Brabant and near the southern French-speaking city of Liege.

A COUPLE has been found guilty of planning an ISIS-inspired attack on London’s Westfield shopping centre on the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings.

Mohammed Rehman, 25, and his secret wife Sana Ahmed Khan, 24, were found guilty on Tuesday at the Old Bailey court.

The would-be jihadis’ plot came undone after Rehman — who dubbed himself the “Silent Bomber” — sent out a tweet asking for tips on which was the best target.

Tweeting out a picture of Jihadi John, the fundamentalist appealed to his followers asking: “Westfield shopping centre or London Underground? Any advice would be appreciated greatly.”

Cops then swooped on his home in Reading on May 28 where they discovered 10kg of nitrate explosives, double the amount of powder the failed 21/7 London bombing attempts used.

Rehman was just days from completing the bomb which could have killed multiple people had he not been foiled by anti-terror police.

Khan funded her husband, who stockpiled the chemicals and even videoed himself setting off a small explosion in his back garden.

Rehman had called 7/7 bomber Shehzad Tanweer his “beloved predecessor” and was also a fan of deceased ISIS executioner Jihadi John.

Middle class Khan was the daughter of a Justice of the Peace and had dreams of becoming a teacher after leaving university with a degree in English.

But her life took a turn when she secretly married her terrorist husband without her family’s knowledge and descended into a world of drugs and extremism.

She bankrolled Rehman’s terrorist activities using payday loans to purchase lethal chemicals and repeatedly watching Tanweer’s 7/7 martyrdom video.

In total, she gave her jihadi husband more than £12,000 ($25,000) over 17 months, taking out four £800 payday loans from the company QuickQuid, the court heard.

Security services were alerted when Rehman started spewing hate filled Islamist rants on Twitter, telling one follower: “Are you actually trying? Why don’t you head to the London Underground on the 7th of July if YOU got the balls.”

He also tweeted after posting a picture of bucket of explosives: “Not bad for an amateur LOL a martyrs nutrition!”

The dangerous jihadi even bragged: “I’m preparing for an Istishaadi [martyrdom] operation. Now I just make explosives in preparations for kuffar lol & when I’ve made the required amount I’ll be wearing them on my chest.”

Following his arrest, he claimed to be pretending to be a “Jihadi warrior” and turned on his wife in court with each accusing the other of being the “real extremist”.

AN alleged jihadist arrested in June on charges that he plotted to blow up Times Square may also be the man who stabbed a nine-year-old New York boy in the neck five months earlier in what some investigators now believe was a botched ISIS audition.

But New York police investigating the January 9 knife attack have been frustrated by the FBI, who won’t give them access to terror suspect Fareed Mumuni, said a source familiar with the case.

Mumuni, 21, lived only 500 metres from Jermaine Culver, who was stabbed as he walked to school in the Mariners Harbor section of New York’s Staten Island.

A surveillance camera on a home across the street captured a stocky attacker as he stalked the boy from behind before grabbing him around the neck and stabbing him in his back, head, neck and arm.

The nine-year-old is seen stumbling a few steps before he regains his footing and runs.

“It looks like he’s trying to kill that kid,” said Luis Padilla, 44, the home’s owner. “He went straight for the jugular.”

Following the savagery, Culver was afraid to leave the hospital. The shell-shocked boy was eventually sent to live with an aunt in Atlanta.

“But he’s alive and fine and well,” said his 21-year-old brother, Shawn Williams.

Williams said the family remains in the dark about his case a year later.

“We still don’t know,” he said. “It seems like the cops gave up on it.”
Boy, 9, stabbed in 'Isis tryout'

In the days after the attack, police distributed fliers reading, “Wanted for Assault 1,” with a surveillance photo of the attacker running away. The New York Police Department also stationed a mobile command unit in the area.

“They came up with less than zero,” the source said.

Police got their first break in the case when federal agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force foiled an alleged four-man, New York-New Jersey terror operation in June. The group had been under surveillance since at least April.

Munther Omar Saleh, 20, of Queens, was arrested on June 13 and charged with plotting to use a pressure-cooker bomb to attack Times Square or One World Trade Centre. He had also been spotted surveilling the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan.

Mumuni, who was studying social work at the College of Staten Island, and Saleh, a student at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens, had met multiple times in May, according to court documents.

They were captured on phone recordings and “exchanged electronic communications in which they discussed attacking members of law enforcement,” the papers say.

Four days after Saleh’s arrest, the task force descended on Mumuni’s home at 6.35am to execute a search warrant.
Weapon .

Mumuni tried to bury a kitchen knife in an agent’s chest, police said. The blade was stopped by the agent’s body armour.

Mumuni, court documents say, “espouses violent jihadist beliefs.” He allegedly told police that he had pledged allegiance to ISIS and that if he failed to join the group in the Middle East, he planned to attack police.

Investigators believe that if Mumuni was the man who knifed the young boy, the attack could have been Mumuni’s audition for ISIS.

“If you look at the video, it looks like he was trying to slit his throat,” the source said.

Police want to quiz Mumuni in the assault, describing the purported jihadist as a “person of interest”.

He has a physical “similarity to the description in the video, he lived three blocks away, and he likes to play with knives and attempted to stab a federal agent,” the source said.

Mumuni’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, could not be reached for comment.

Navy officer ‘crossed the line’

Navy officer ‘crossed the line’

Defence and counter-terrorism experts say a navy Muslim officer crossed the line when she tweeted her political views.