Five Melbourne men suspected of trying to travel to Indonesia on a seven-metre fishing boat in a bid to get to Syria could be kept in custody for at least another two days without charge.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Australian Federal Police had an extension granted for an extra 20 hours questioning time and 48 hours holding time for the men, who were arrested on Tuesday.
The men are suspected of towing a boat from Bendigo to far north Queensland in a plan to fight with Islamic State in Syria. The extension will allow the AFP more time to piece together the odd plot, which is believed to include a rendezvous in the central Victorian city.
Musa Cerantonio, Shayden Thorne, Antonio Granata, Kadir Kaya and Paul Dacre had their passports seized previously because of extremist activity.
While Mr Cerantonio and Mr Thorne had been prominently linked to radical Islam for several years, Mr Kaya first came into the spotlight in October when he said on radio that he wanted to leave Australia, a country he "hated", but couldn't because his Turkish passport had been seized.
Little is known about the other two men: Mr Granata is understood to have grown up in Melbourne, and Mr Dacre has spent time in Perth.
It is unclear if Mr Dacre knew Mr Thorne, or his controversial brother Junaid, from his time in Western Australia.
The brothers moved from Western Australia to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.
Mr Kaya declared on 3AW radio last year that he had been on a watch list since early 2014, and claimed he wanted to join the Turkish military to fight against Islamic State.
"If I'm such a threat then you wouldn't want me here," he said in the interview with Neil Mitchell.
Police followed the five men much of the way from Melbourne to about 350km north of Cairns.
A short time before their arrest, the men stopped at the Palmer River Roadhouse where employee Andrew Stewart served them.
"They were just a few blokes in a car with a boat on the back. They just didn't look like fisherman, they didn't look like they had any gear," he said.
He said they bought a few drinks and went to the toilet.
"I asked them if they were going fishing, but they didn't comment much," he said.
Attorney-General George Brandis, who was on the election campaign in the marginal seat of Petrie, north of Brisbane, on Thursday, said that despite the seemingly bumbling nature of the escape plot, there was a real possibility the men could have successfully travelled to Syria.
"[Police] were of the view that there was a significant level of risk that these men may have done that very thing," he said
"The lengths to which they went shows how determined they were.
"This is something the government has never taken lightly. This is not a problem we have underestimated, it's not a problem we've exaggerate
