Australia police say that seemingly anti -Semitic terrorism incidents were really “criminal work” to sow chaos

A trailer full of explosives that Australian politicians described previously as an anti -Semitic terrorism plot and an event of massive frustrated victims was organized by criminals in a complicated deception and was never destined to be detonated, police said Monday.

The law enforcement agencies investigating the trailer’s discovery on the outskirts of Sydney released in a press conference that their placement was invented by criminals who intended to obtain personal gains from the inclination of the authorities to their presence, a strange turn in a saga that followed a wave of antisemy crimes in Australia.

The group of attacks aimed at places where Jews live, work and study, including a Synagogue fire pump and a nursery center and several cases of anti -Semitic vandalism were committed by “a very small group, and potentially an individual behind all those matters,” said a deputy police commissioner of the state of Nueva Wales del Sur, David Hudson, David Hudson, to journalists.

The authorities in January made the unusual statement that none of the 12 that had arrested in relation to the series of crimes in the largest cities in Australia, Sydney and Melbourne, were promoted by the anti -Semitic ideology and, instead, were rental criminals. Hudson said that 14 more arrested on Monday were not motivated by hatred either.

But he added that he has no doubt that anti -Semitism in Australia, which has dominated the media and the political sphere after the recent series of crimes, has experienced “an escalation in the last 18 months” from the terrorist attack led by Hamas of October 7, 2023. War in Gaza.

Preliminary data published by the Executive Council of Australian beans only a few months after that attack showed a total of 662 antisemy incidents in Australia during October and November 2023.

“In comparison, there were 495 anti -Jewish incidents reported in Australia during the 12 months full as of September 30, 2023,” said the Council at that time.

In response to the increase in such incidents, Australia new promulgated laws In January 2024, it explicitly prohibits the performance of Nazi greeting in public and the exhibition or sale of Nazi hate symbols such as swastika. The new laws also made the act of glorifying or praising the acts of terrorism a criminal offense.

“Essentially a criminal scam job”

But several incidents now seem to have been part of the elaborate criminal deception, and no, in fact, rooted in anti -Semitism.

The revelation, filtered to the public before the police planned to announce it, which was found in January in January on the outskirts of Sydney, full of explosives used in the mining industry and contained a list of the alleged Jewish objectives, led state and national leaders to say that it represented an escalation in potential extremist violence.

But the researchers said Monday that “almost immediately” they believed that the trailer appearance was “part of a terrorist plot manufactured, essentially a criminal work”, but maintained their suspicions in secret, according to the commissioner of the Federal Australian Police Krissy Barrett.

The trailer was easily found and the explosives were visibly. “In addition, there was no detonator,” said Barrett, added that “he was never going to cause a massive victims event.”

On the other hand, those who organized the caravan planned to inform the authorities an imminent attack against the Jewish Australians, said Barrett. Why the researchers believed they had done it was not simple.

Motivation, interest abroad and a culprit still in general

Barrett and Hudson, who spoke in the name of an effort to apply the joint law gathered to arrest the perpetrators of antisemy crimes, said they believed that those who falsified the trailer plot were destined to attract the attention of the authorities, divert police resources, create fear and take advantage of the situation to obtain personal profits. That could have included attempts to use information about an attack to negotiate with the police for minor sentences in other criminal procedures.

“We believe that the person who threw from the strings wanted changes in his criminal state, but maintained a distance from his scheme and hired alleged local criminals,” Barrett said. That person remains in general, he added.

The authorities have said since January that interests abroad are orchestrating crimes, although they have not been more specific. Nor have they disseminated which local criminal groups could have been hired to undertake the attacks, which have included odious graffiti.

It was not the only time this happened, Barrett added. “Too many criminals working in a criminal concert economy are accepting these tasks for money,” he said.

The 14 people arrested Monday face charges in relation to the more than a dozen attacks that researchers believe they were orchestrated.

The Strange Twist limits a summer where anti -Semitic crimes started Sydney and Melbourne, a home of 85% of the Jewish population of Australia. A person has been physically injured: a worshiper who suffered burns in fire that was established in a Melbourne synagogue in December.

There was “a little comfort to be taken by the Jewish community”, in the fact that the worst episodes were not ideological acts of hated, Hudson said. But the crimes have had “a chilling effect on the Jewish community” and caused unjustified suspicions of other groups, added Barrett.

High profile attacks are not the only ones that the police are investigating. Almost 200 other people have been accused since October 2023 in the state of Nueva Wales del Sur, where Sydney is located, with crimes linked to anti -Semitism, police told Associated Press in February.