Man linked to neo-Nazi group charged with assault after alleged attack on Nine security guard
Counter-terrorism police in Victoria have charged one of the leaders of an Australian neo-Nazi group with assault after an alleged attack on a Channel Nine security guard.
Victoria police have confirmed that detectives had charged 27-year-old Thomas Sewell with affray, recklessly causing injury and unlawful assault after he was arrested along with one other man on Tuesday night.
He has been granted bail to appear at the Melbourne magistrates court on 27 July.
The second man, a 21-year-old also from Rowville, was released pending further inquiries, police said.
“Detectives from Counter Terrorism Command last night arrested two men as part of their investigation to an alleged assault in Docklands on 1 March,” police said in a statement.
“A 27-year-old Rowville man has subsequently been charged with affray, recklessly cause injury and unlawful assault.”
Victoria’s Counter Terrorism Command is responsible for investigating incidents of terrorism and communal violence. Communal violence is defined by police as violence or threats of violence between groups that define themselves by their differences, including ideology, politics and religion.
Sewell, a leader of the Australian neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network, was arrested on Tuesday night along with the other man after police alleged a security guard had been “approached and assaulted by an unknown man at a Bourke Street business about 5pm”.
On Monday the Guardian reported that Sewell had been filmed assaulting the guard after he and another man came to Channel Nine’s offices in Melbourne just hours before the network’s A Current Affair broadcast a segment about the organisation.
Footage of the assault, posted online and seen by Guardian Australia,shows the security guard ushering Sewell and the other man, who is holding a camera, out of the building.
The second man uses a racial slur against the security guard, who is black. He appears to put his hand over the
camera. The video then shows Sewell strike the guard a number of times as the guard falls to the ground.
Police have previously confirmed the guard was transported to hospital after the incident, and a spokesperson for the network confirmed it had handed police CCTV footage of the incident.