Australian Terror Trial Begins

SYDNEY — The trial of nine men accused in Australia's largest alleged terrorist conspiracy started Monday, but was dominated by discussion of the undersized courtroom rather than the facts of the case.

The nine Muslims are charged with conspiring between June 2004 and November 2005 to "do acts in preparation for a terrorist" attack. None has entered a plea. If convicted, they could face a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The suspects sat in a glass-walled dock in the courtroom at the New South Wales state Supreme Court while a group of supporters occupied the 30 public seats. More than two dozen lawyers appeared to represent the suspects — so many that Justice Anthony Whealy told some to sit in the otherwise empty jury box.

Among the issues Whealy was asked to rule on was a motion to move the trial to a bigger courtroom.

Whealy apologized for the overcrowding and referred to "teething problems" in the courthouse, which was only recently opened.

In pretrial hearings, prosecutors said the suspects were devotees of a radical Muslim cleric sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, and that they made a pact to launch a terrorist attack because they felt their religion was under threat.

Prosecutors alleged they downloaded bomb-making instructions off the Internet and stockpiled chemicals to make explosives.

They were arrested in a series of 2005 raids in Sydney and the southern city of Melbourne, where cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika and other followers are being tried on separate charges of belonging to a terrorist group.

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