Five Australian men have been found guilty of plotting a major terror attack using home-made bombs and powerful guns to cause mass carnage on Australian soil.

After a 10-month trial in the New South Wales Supreme Court — the longest running terror trial in Australia's history — a jury took four and a half weeks to convict the men aged 25 to 44, who cannot be named for legal reasons, of plotting terror acts.

The men, all from Sydney's south-west, were arrested in a series of raids on their homes in 2005. They were accused of conspiring between July 2004 and November 2005 to carry out a violent jihadist act, possibly targeting the then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, to force the government into changing its policies on the Middle East.

They spent months working to acquire chemicals, firearms, and bomb making equipment, the court heard. Materials found at the homes of some of the accused included battery acid, hydrogen peroxide, and timers as well as jihadi material showing beheadings and footage of the 9/11 twin towers attacks.

Crown prosecutor Richard Maidment, SC, told the court that had a bomb been built it would have been acetone peroxide or triacetone triperoxide, the ingredients of the bombs used in the London Underground bombing on July 7, 2005.

Mr Maidment told the jury the men were devout Muslims driven by extremist beliefs to plot violent jihad in retaliation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in his summing up Justice Anthony Whealey said the Crown case was that the men had been influenced by the teachings of the Mujahideen: "You kills us, so we kill you. You bomb us, so we bomb you."

One of the men attended a terror training camp in Pakistan, while three of his fellow accused attended similar camps in far western New South Wales to prepare for an attack, the court heard.

During the trial the jury was shown more than 3,000 exhibits, heard from over 300 witnesses and was taken through numerous intercepted phone calls and text messages during the trial.

No direct evidence was shown to the court to link the accused men to a supposed terror plot and the prosecution did not define the men's target.

The defendants now face life in prison when they are sentenced on December 14.

Australia has not suffered a peacetime attack on home soil since a bombing outside a Sydney hotel during a Commonwealth meeting in 1978 that killed three people. However, 95 Australians have been killed in bomb attacks in Indonesia since 2002.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Times Charity Appeal: SolarAid
• Is it Black Monday all over again for Dubai?
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal