Tensions rising after second knife attack rocks Sydney
Australian prime minister urges public to avoid taking law into their own hands
COMMUNITY leaders called for calm after a teenager was accused of wounding a Christian bishop and priest during a church service in a second high-profile knife attack to rock Sydney in recent days.
The 16-year-old was overpowered by the shocked congregation at Christ the Good Shepherd Church after he allegedly stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and Father Isaac Royel during a service on Monday that was being streamed online.
Police have not commented on reports that the boy’s fingers were severed by parishioners in the Orthodox Assyrian church in suburban Wakeley, but confirmed his hand injuries were “severe”.
Video of the attack spread quickly on social media and an angry mob converged on the church demanding vengeance. They hurled bricks, bottles and fence boards at police, who temporarily barricaded the boy inside the church for his own safety. Many in the crowd chanted “an eye for an eye” and “bring him out”.
Several people including police officers required hospital treatment following the hours-long riot.
The church said in a statement yesterday that it “denounced retaliation of any kind”.
Police stood guard around mosques in parts of Sydney yesterday after reports that text messages were circulating urging the Assyrian Christian community to retaliate against Muslims.
Police and community leaders said that public anxiety had been heightened by a lone assailant’s knife attack in a Sydney shopping centre on Saturday that killed five women and a male security guard who attempted to intervene.
The 40-year-old assailant, Cauchi, was shot dead by police.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese urged the public not to take the law into their own hands.
“We understand the distress and concerns that are there in the community, particularly after the tragic event at Bondi Junction on Saturday,” Albanese told reporters, referring to the Westfield Bondi Junction Shopping Centre.
“But it is not acceptable to impede police and injure police doing their duty or to damage police vehicles in a way that we saw last night,” he added.
News South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb yesterday
Joel declared the church attack a terrorist incident, but not the shopping mall rampage.
The terrorism categorisation allows more law enforcement resources to be focused on the crime. The declaration also gives police expanded powers to stop and search people, premises and vehicles without a warrant.
Webb said that the teenager’s comments and actions pointed to a religious motive for the attack. She did not detail the wording of the comments that led her to believe he had been religiously motivated.
Ten Network television reported that the boy had told churchgoers who restrained him in Arabic: “If they didn’t insult my Prophet, I wouldn’t have come here.”
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the nation’s main domestic spy agency, and Australian Federal Police have joined state police in a counterterrorism task force to investigate who else was potentially involved.
ASIO director-general Mike Burgess agreed with Webb that the mall attack was not terrorism as defined by Australian authorities.
To call it a terrorist attack, there must be “information or evidence that suggests actually the motivation was religiously motivated or ideologically motivated,” Burgess said.
He added: “In the case of Saturday, that was not the case.
“In this case, the information we and the police have before us ... would indicate strongly that that is the case and that’s why it was called an act of terrorism.”
It is not acceptable to impede and injure police doing their duty