Hours after police raided their family homes in the early hours of Thursday, two close friends sat smoking in their car with nowhere to go.
Raban Alou and his friend Tom Dudu waited for 12 hours as police forensically scoured their western Sydney homes and removed computers, passports and mobile phones as part of a large-scale counter-terrorism operation.
The Alou and Dudu family know the Azari clan, a household that was also targeted by police trying to stop an alleged terrorist attack.
Mr Alou said police yelled at his family to "get on the ground" and put their hands in the air at their Wentworthville unit just after 4am.
He said police "were after" his brother Kawa Alou, 21, who had just finished a three-year jail stint for a violent assault.
"I dunno, I got a lot of anger. It's a war on Islam just because we grow our beards. They want to label us as a terrorist, or supporters of IS, whatever, that's up to you." he said.
Mr Alou said police targeted a number of his brother's friends at Westmead, Guildford and Revesby during the dawn raids.
"They [the police] said it was something to do with terrorist activity. I was like, relax.
"No one is charged yet; we don't have nothing to do with anything. They are searching now but there is nothing to find," he said.
He later said he believed Kawa may have been targeted because he hung around with "hot heads".
"He's just trying to live his life, do his own thing. I know ASIO is on to them [other friends targeted during the raids]."
Kawa Alou returned to his Wentworthville unit on Lane Street about midday nursing a bleeding nose and bandaged elbows.
He said he had been to the doctors to get medical treatment after police raided his unit.
"They told me to get on my knee, so I got on my knees and I co-operated and they dragged me and pulled me. Scratched my elbows and then they stomped on my head and breaked [sic] my nose."
A friend of the Alou family, plumber Mr Dudu, 19, said more than a dozen police searched through his Westmead house about the same time.
"Yeah, it's stupid. [I'm] shocked."
He said officers took mobile phones from his two brothers and mother and would not let him go into his bedroom inside his Bridge Road home.
Mr Dudu said he had no idea why police were interested in talking to his younger brother.
"He's 15 years old, he is still at home, he's in year 10," Mr Dudu said. "We haven't done anything."
When Fairfax Media asked them if they had heard of any plans for a random beheading in Martin Place, the men shook their heads.
"Where's that? Martin Place?" asked Mr Alou.
Mr Dudu chipped in: "Oh yeah, I heard that on the radio."
The pair said they were both handed search warrants with a list of things police were searching for.
"They are looking for electronics, bombs, firearms, ammunition, phones, numbers, shit like that. It says that on the warrant, what they are looking for," Mr Alou said.
