Embassy bomb plotter released from Australian jail

CANBERRA, May 17 (Reuters) A British-born man, convicted of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Australia, was released from prison early today after serving about half his nine-year sentence.

Jack Roche, 53, pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in 2004, becoming the first person convicted under tougher Australian anti-terrorism laws introduced in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 airliner attacks on the United States.

He was released after four-and-a-half years from a maximum security prison in the Western Australian capital of Perth, and taken to his suburban home in a waiting taxi.

''I'm glad to be out. At the advice of my lawyer, I'm not going to make any further comment. Thank you,'' Roche, an Australian citizen, told media outside his Perth home.

Australia's Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the government had no power to keep Roche in jail as people sentenced to less than 10 years in prison are automatically eligible for release at the end of their non-parole period.

Under his strict parole conditions, Roche will have to report regularly to police and seek police permission to travel interstate or overseas. If he commits a crime or breaches parole conditions, he can be sent straight back to jail.

At his trial, the court was told that Roche, who converted to Islam in the early 1990s, travelled to Afghanistan where he received explosives training with the al Qaeda militant network and met its leader, Osama bin Laden.

He returned to Australia and carried out surveillance for a planned attack on the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.

His lawyer Hylton Quail told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

radio that Roche now wanted to live a quiet life.

Australia, a staunch US ally, with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, has never suffered a major peacetime attack on home soil, although the country has lost 92 citizens in a series of bomb attacks in neighbouring Indonesia.

REUTERS GL HS1038