A trailer filled with explosives that Australian politicians described earlier as an anti-Semitic plot of terrorism and a thwarted mass event was organized by criminals in a complicated hoax and was never supposed to explode, police said on Monday.
The law enforcement organizations investigating the discovery of the trailer by Janan on the outskirts of Sydney disclosed during a press conference that his placement was concocted by criminals who wanted to draw personal gains from the conduct of the authorities to his presence – a bizarre touch in a saga that followed a wave of an anti -Semitic crimes in Australia.
The group of attacks targeting places where the Jews work and study, including a bombing of fires of a synagogue And a daycare center and several cases of anti-Semitic vandalism were committed by “a very small group, and potentially an individual behind all these questions,” the Deputy Commissioner of the South Wales, David Hudson on Monday.
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The authorities in January stated unusual that none of the 12 people they had then stopped in relation to the wave of crimes in the largest cities in Australia, Sydney and Melbourne were motivated by anti -Semitic ideology and were rather criminals for rental. Hudson said that 14 other people arrested on Monday were not motivated by hatred either.
But he added that he did not doubt that anti -Semitism in Australia – which dominated the media and the political sphere following the recent wave of crimes – has known “an escalation in the last 18 months” since October 7, 2023, the terrorist attack led by Hamas against Israel which sparked the War in Gaza.
The preliminary data published by the Executive Council of the Australian Jewish Community only a few months after this attack showed a total of 662 anti -Semitic incidents in Australia were reported in October and November 2023.
“In comparison, 495 anti-Jewish incidents were reported in Australia during the 12 months to September 30, 2023,” said the Council at the time.
In response to the increase in these incidents, Australia Adopted new laws In January 2024, explicitly ban the performance of Nazi salvation in public and the display or sale of Nazi hatred symbols such as the swastika. The new laws have also made the act of glorification or praise of acts of terrorism a criminal offense.
“Essentially criminal work”
But a certain number of incidents now seem to be part of the elaborate criminal hoax, and not, in fact, rooted in anti -Semitism.
The revelation – disclosed to the public before the police predicted to announce it – that a trailer was found in January outside Sydney, filled with explosives used in the mining industry and containing a list of alleged Jewish targets, encouraged national and national leaders to say that he represented an escalation of potential extremist violence.
But the investigators said on Monday that they “believed” almost immediately “that the appearance of the trailer was” part of a manufactured terrorist plot, essentially a work of condemned “, but kept their secret suspicions, according to the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett.
The trailer was easily found and the explosives were visibly displayed. “In addition, there was no detonator,” said Barrett, adding that it was never going to cause a mass event “.
Instead, those who organized the caravan then planned to inform the authorities of an imminent attack on the Jewish Australians, said Barrett. Why the investigators thought they had done it was not easy.
Motivation, interests abroad and a generally culprit in general
Barrett and Hudson, speaking on behalf of a joint effort to apply the law met to arrest the authors of anti-Semitic crimes, said they thought that those who stole the plot of the trailer intended to attract the attention of the authorities, to divert the police resources, to create fear and to take advantage of the situation for personal purposes. This could have included attempts to use information on an attack to negotiate the police for lower terms in other criminal procedures.
“We believe that the person pulling the strings wanted changes to his criminal status, but maintained a distance from his program and hired alleged local criminals,” said Barrett. This person remains in freedom, she added.
The authorities have said since January that they believe that interests abroad orchestrate crimes, although they have not been more precise. They also did not disclose which local criminal groups could have been hired to undertake attacks, which included hate graffiti.
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It was not the only time it happened, added Barrett. “Too many delinquents working in a criminal economy of concerts accept these tasks for money,” she said.
The 14 people arrested Monday faced accusations concerning more than a dozen attacks that investigators think they were orchestrated.
The strange torsion breaks a summer when anti -Semitic crimes have taken a tour of Sydney and Melbourne, which houses 85% of the Australian Jewish population. A person was physically injured – a worshiper who suffered burns in the fire that was established in a synagogue in Melbourne in December.
There was “comfort to be taken by the Jewish community”, in fact that the worst episodes were not hate ideological acts, Hudson said. But the crimes had “a scary effect on the Jewish community” and caused unjustified suspicions of other groups, added Barrett.
High -level attacks are not the only police investigation. Nearly 200 people have been charged since October 2023 in the state of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, with crimes related to anti-Semitism, police told the Associated Press in February.
