Not always in trouble ... accused terrorist suspect Yacqub Khayre at 12. Source: The Daily Telegraph
By Liam Houlihan — THE man who raised one of the alleged terror plotters claims he told authorities of his concerns about the youth.
Yacqub Khayre’s uncle, who brought the boy from Somalia as a toddler, wept yesterday as he looked at childhood photos.
Ibrahim Khayre said Yacqub had not always been in trouble and was faultless as a child but the boy he raised as his son dropped out of Gladstone Park college in Melbourne at the age of 17 and left home.
He said authorities including police and court social workers foiled his attempts to reach out to Yacqub.
Mr Khayre said that when police called him looking for Yacqub, “I told them: ‘I don’t know where he is. You don’t know where he is.’ I said: ‘You tied our hands behind our backs. You took control from us.’
“He was stolen from us, basically. They treated us like undesirables. Like this kid has to be out of the house.”
A court heard this week that Yacqub left Australia for Somalia this year and attended a camp where weapons and military training might have occurred.
He has been charged with conspiring to prepare an armed attack on the Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney’s southwest.
“They don’t let us parents look after our kids. They told us, ‘Leave him alone. He is free.’ They’ve given him a housing commission place or something like that,” he said.
“I blame the Government itself. He left home when he was Year 12. As any normal kid will do, he became a big rebel.
“Even at the police station they told me: ‘He doesn’t want to see you. Just leave him alone’,” Mr Khayre said.
“But as a parent your duty of care is to keep him out of the wrong hands. You don’t want your kid influenced by twisted minds.”
He said he suspected Yacqub also received welfare payments that helped him maintain his wayward life away from the family home.
Mr Khayre brought his father, mother and seven nieces and nephews – including Yacqub – to Australia from Somalia via Kenya as refugees.
Even in Somalia Yacqub was mostly raised by his grandparents as his parents worked in various countries including Saudi Arabia.
“Yacqub was disturbed when Grandpa died. Before then he was a very nice man because the elder man was at home,” Mr Khayre said.
“When my dad died, Yacqub was very disturbed. He became a different person. He was a nice man but when my dad died he became disturbed.”
Mr Khayre said he sponsored Yacqub’s parents to come to Australia about five years ago but he said Yacqub still regarded him as his main parent.
“He told me, ‘Uncle, you brought me up – I consider you as a father’,” he said.
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Source: The Daily Telegraph
