Sydney: Two alleged terrorists arrested with a home-made Islamic State movement flag in Sydney planned to harm someone with a hunting knife or machete in an IS-style attack, police said on Wednesday.
The men would have carried out the attack on Tuesday if they had not been arrested that day in a counterterrorism police raid, New South Wales state Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn told reporters.
Police seized the knife, machete, flag and a video which showed "a man talking about carrying out an attack," she said.
"What we are going to allege is consistent with the IS messaging," Burn said.
"We believe that the men were potentially going to harm somebody, maybe even kill somebody, and potentially using one of the items that we identified and recovered yesterday, potentially a knife," she added.
The men will appear in a Sydney court on Wednesday charged with undertaking acts in preparation or planning for a terrorist act. It was not immediately clear what potential penalty they face.
