Musa Cerantonio

In 2012 Cerantonio was again approached by Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officers. After a few months, ASIO started pushing him for more information. According to Cerantonio, they ordered him "Tell us who’s up to no good, I know you know who they are." "We can make a lot of trouble for you based on those talks you give," An ASIO officer threatened to cancel Cerantonio’s passport should he not co-operate.

Cerantonio temporarily agreed with ASIO’s demands, but then fled to the Philippines under the pretext of visiting his brother. His brother was in Manila, but he traveled to Mindanao. While there, during fighting between the Philippine Army and the Moro National Liberation Front his apartment was bombed by warplanes.[6]

In February 2014, while in the Philippines, he married Joan Montayre, a 32 year old designer, and moved to an apartment in the Cebu province.

In June 2014, on Twitter Cerantonio claimed he was in Syria. He was branded by Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop as a fraud, “He said he was fighting in Syria and Iraq, but he was holed up in the Philippines.” Cerantonio says the tweet was posted to throw the police off the search. “I gave a friend access to my account, and the Australian Government knows I did not write that.”

In July 2014, Cerantonio was arrested in the central Philippines city of Lapu-Lapu and taken to Manila. Cerantonio claims he was denied access to a lawyer by Warden L’rev J. Del Cruz. :The warden was telling inmates not to talk to me because I was a terrorist,” he says. After two weeks in detention he was deported to Melbourne without charges.[7][8]

In October 2014, Cerantonio condemned the Letter to Baghdadi as a "letter of ignorance and disbelief". [9]

In May 2016, Cerantonio was arrested in the Northern territory along with four others over an alleged plot to flee the country in a boat. The group was charged with "making preparations for incursions into foreign countries to engage in hostile activities." After his arrest Cerantonio was remanded in custody, with the trial delayed and expected in January 2018.[10] The other four arrested were Paul Dacre, Anthony (Antonio) Granata, Kadir Kaya, and Shayden Thorne. Thorne is the brother of controversial Islamic preacher Junaid Thorne. A sixth man, Murat Kaya, brother of Kadir Kaya, was arrested separately at his Melbourne home.[11] Police alleged that the group towed a seven-metre boat from Melbourne, and had planned to travel by sea on it to West Papua, the Philippines, and finally to Syria, intending to join Islamic State.[10][12] Later it was found they actually intended to stay in the southern Philippines to help militant Muslims overthrow the government there. All those involved in the plot pled guilty and received prison sentences in February 2019. Thorne was sentenced to three years and ten months, but by then he had already served most of his minimum time.[13] Dacre, Granata, and Kadir Kaya were each sentenced to four years in prison, three years non-parole period. Murat Kaya was sentenced to three years and eight months, two years and nine months non-parole.[14]

Murat Kaya was released under a control order in late January 2020, and Shayden Thorne in early March 2020 under an interim control order.[15]

In May 2019, Cerantonio was sentenced to seven years in prison for his part in the 2016 plot.[16] [17] For his defense, his lawyer, Jarrod Williams, said that Musa "doesn’t always fit the profile of an Islamic extremist", as he enjoys music by the likes of AC/DC, Cold Chisel, Johnny Cash, Paul Simon and Rammstein.[18]