Seven teenagers arrested in connection with knife attack on Sydney Christian priest – Oceania

Australian police have arrested seven teenagers in Sydney accused of being followers of an extremist ideology, local authorities said, quoted by the AP, BTA reported.

The teenagers were arrested as part of surprise police checks to protect the population from a potential attack.

The seven arrested were aged between 15 and 17 and were part of the same ring as the 16-year-old accused of stabbing a bishop at a Sydney church on April 15, police said.

Five other teenagers were questioned yesterday by a joint counter-terrorism team including state and federal police, the Australian Homeland Security Service and the New South Wales State Crime Commission, which specializes in investigating extremist organizations and organized crime.

“More than 400 police officers carried out 13 raids at properties in Sydney’s south-west as the suspects were considered an immediate threat,” NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said.

“It is our understanding that these individuals have adhered to a religiously motivated, violent extremist ideology,” Hudson told reporters.

“The group is believed to have placed the population of New South Wales at unwanted risk and threat and our current purely investigative strategies were not adequate in terms of public safety,” Hudson added.

Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Chrissy Barrett said investigators had found no evidence of specific targets or timing of the planned “act of violence”.

Barrett said the police operation was unrelated to tomorrow’s commemoration of Anzac Day, an Australian public holiday commemorating the war dead (the anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand army units at Gallipoli, Turkey, on April 25, 1915). It has been a potential target for extremists in the past.

Last Friday, after a knife attack that injured an Assyrian bishop and a priest, a 16-year-old youth was charged with committing an act of terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Judge Geoffrey Kennett of the Federal Court of Australia today extended the banning order imposed on social media network X from distributing videos of the stabbing until May 10.

X has announced it will fight in court Australian orders to remove posts related to the attack. The Australian Electronic Safety Commission, which bills itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safe online, has filed to the court for a temporary global injunction.

After stabbing Bishop Mar Marie Emmanuel and the Reverend Isaac Royel at the Church of Christ the Good Shepherd during an online service, the teenager allegedly spoke in Arabic about the Prophet Muhammad being insulted.

Australian Security Service director-general Mike Burgess confirmed his organization was involved in today’s operation.

“The Australian Security Service is always doing its job of providing security intelligence as an opportunity for the police to deal with these issues when there are immediate threats to life or something else that is developing,” Burgess said.

He said investigations into minors peaked a few years ago, when they made up 50% of the NSA’s “priority counter-terrorism cases”, and since then the numbers have declined.

“However, the number of minors being investigated is again increasing in relation to social media content,” Burgess said. “Minors are a vulnerable group,” he added.