Australian jury convicts man in Etihad flight bomb plot

SYDNEY, Australia – An Australian jury on Wednesday convicted a man of plotting to blow up an Etihad Airways airliner on a flight from Sydney to the United Arab Emirates with a bomb hidden in a meat grinder.

Khaled Khayat, 51, had pleaded not guilty in the New South Wales state Supreme Court to conspiring in early 2017 to plan a terrorist act. The jury convicted him but will continue deliberating on Thursday on whether his brother Mahmoud Khayat, 34, is guilty of the same charge.

The plan involved detonating the bomb concealed in a meat grinder on a flight from Sydney on July 15, 2017, to the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi, but it was abandoned when a bag with the bomb inside was too heavy to be taken aboard as carry-on luggage.

The flight landed without incident and the brothers were arrested two weeks later.

Khayat is to be sentenced on July 16 and faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison.