Fed: ASIO monitoring people with links to terrorists - Williams

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Fed: ASIO monitoring people with links to terrorists - Williams

SYDNEY, Dec 16 AAP - ASIO was continuing to monitor the activities of Australians withknown links to overseas terrorist organisations, federal Attorney-General Daryl Williamssaid today.

The Sunday Herald-Sun yesterday reported two highly-trained and dangerous al-Qaedaoperatives were at large in Australia.

The information about the two Caucasian men emerged from interrogations of allegedAustralian Taliban fighters David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, who are being held at CampX-ray in Cuba.

The paper quoted senior security sources as saying the information had been passedon to the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Mr Williams said today there were known supporters of terrorist organisations in Australiaand they were being monitored.

"What we can say is we know that there are supporters of overseas terrorist organisationsin Australia," Mr Williams told Sky News.

"We know that there are people in Australia who have trained with terrorist organisationsoverseas.

"ASIO very diligently monitors the activities of anybody in that sort of category."

Mr Williams said the two Australian suspects in Camp X-ray had been interrogated severaltimes and authorities were now working with information gleaned from them.

"There has been several interrogations of Mr Hicks, there's also been interrogationof a number of other detainees overseas in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere and some usefulinformation has been obtained," he said.

"The authorities are working on that information but it's not really possible to outlinewhat that information reveals."

AAP sal/mg/sp

KEYWORD: TERROR AUST DAYLEAD