Australia bars sheikh as security risk

Canberra, Apr 4: A Muslim sheikh linked by US authorities to the 1993 World Trade Center bombings has been refused entry to Australia because he posed a security threat, Australia's government said today.

Sheikh Bilal Philips, a Canadian citizen who lives in Qatar, was barred from entering Australia to speak at an Islamic conference in Melbourne.

''It's unrelated to religion, it's related to whether there is a risk to our national security, whether there is a risk to vilification of segments of the Australian community, inciting discord,'' Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews told local radio.

Philips was named by the US government as an ''unindicted co-conspirator'' in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six people and injured another 1,000.

He was deported from the US in 2004.

In the past Philips, 50, has written that ''Western culture, led by the United States, is the enemy of Islam''.

Philips supports a conservative form of Islam that approves of stonings and public execution for crimes, as well as marriage to young girls.

Australia, a close ally of the United States, has around 2,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is considering sending special forces troops back to Afghanistan to help deflect a spring offensive by the resurgent Taliban.

Philips, whose family moved to Canada from Jamaica when he was 11, applied for a short-stay visa in March.

Another Saudi-based Sheikh was also trying to obtain a visa for the Australian Islamic Conference at the weekend.

Reuters