Aussie dream soured for alleged terrorist

SYDNEY - Eight years ago Omar Baladjam appeared in a hard-bitten crime drama as a ram-raider who killed two policemen.

This week, the 28-year-old former actor was charged with trying to murder two officers during a shoot-out in a Sydney suburb.

Baladjam's evolution to an alleged terrorist is one of the more extraordinary stories to have emerged from this week's counter-terrorism raids in Melbourne and Sydney.

His small-time crook role dates back to 1997, when he appeared in Wildside, a gritty ABC crime drama.

Beside him in the car were two other "ram-raiders". One of them, Rose Byrne, went on to play opposite Brad Pitt in the Hollywood blockbuster Troy.

The other actor, Paul Pantano, has forged a successful television drama career.

But Baladjam is alleged to have chosen a very different path. He is now in a Sydney hospital with serious injuries, having been shot by police on Tuesday.

When approached by officers near a mosque, he allegedly fired several shots from a revolver, wounding an officer in the hand before being shot in the neck.

A gun was also found in the backpack he was carrying.

On Wednesday, at a special court hearing beside his Liverpool Hospital bed, Baladjam was charged with 13 offences, including planning a terrorist act and the attempted murder of two police officers.

Baladjam, who is half-Indonesian and was born in Australia, also appeared as a graffiti artist in the soap opera Home and Away in 1998.

While Home and Away epitomises the Antipodean suburban idyll of barbies and easy access to surf and sand, for Baladjam the Australian dream clearly went sour.

He drifted from acting and was most recently working as a spraypainter.

Home for him, his wife and three children was West Hoxton, one of the bleak brick-veneer suburbs on the outer rim of Sydney that are strongholds for immigrant communities.

"He was a bit of a wild kid," Brett Praed, an actor who knew Baladjam, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Steve Knapman, a Wildside producer, said: "He seemed really enthusiastic. I can't remember anything bad about him at all."

Baladjam's former agent, Di Kounnas, told the newspaper she was "pretty shocked" at his alleged involvement in the terrorist plot.