The man reported to be the most senior Australian fighting for ISIS has called for attacks in his native country in a new militant propaganda video, just days after counterterrorism police in Melbourne foiled a terror plot he allegedly helped to plan.
Neil Prakash, who has since adopted the nom de guerre Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, is believed to be the most senior Australian member of ISIS, serving as an important recruiter. Australian federal police are investigating his links to the five Melbourne men arrested last week for plotting to attack ANZAC Day celebrations.
"I also send a message to my brothers, my beloved brothers in Islam in Australia," he says in the video. "Now is the time to rise, now is the time to wake up... You must start attacking them before they attack you."
"All I hear on the news in Australia is that this sister has been violated, this sister had her hijab ripped off, but no, you see the brothers sitting [around]," he says.
The ABC reported that the 23-year-old, who is of Fijian-Indian and Cambodian background, journeyed to Syria in early 2013. After former Sydney bouncer Mohammad Ali Baryalei died fighting in Syria in 2014, Prakash is believed to have assumed his place as a senior recruiter.
"Islamic State is sort of like a comet with a long tail -- it's got a very tight nucleus then a long diffuse tail," Greg Barton, director at Monash University's Global Terrorism Research Centre, told the ABC on Monday. "It looks as if Prakash is right in that nucleus."
The new propaganda film, which is heavily edited and stylized in line with ISIS video production skills, appears to have been filmed before the Melbourne arrests, although the video is undated.
However, Prakash does make reference to his "dear brother Numan," who is believed to be Numan Haider, an 18-year-old man shot dead after stabbing two counterterrorism officers in Melbourne in September 2014.
In the 12-minute video, entitled "The Story of Abu Khaled al-Cambodi," Prakash shares his story of how he converted to Islam. He described feeling socially lost and confused, as well as distanced about his family's Buddhism. "Don’t you ever think all this time you’re working, working, working, and all this money goes to the government?" he says, relaying a conversation he had with a relative. "If you think about it deeply they use that money to have war on other people."
After spending minutes sharing his wandering story, which is emblematic of the multitudes of disaffected young men who have drifted towards jihadist Islam, Prakash then blasts media coverage of ISIS recruits. “The media has portrayed that we come here, that we are social outcasts, that we had nobody, that we had to turn to Islam because we were just trouble makers in the past, but this is far from the reality,” he says.