The Australian Federal Police have charged five teenagers on Wednesday in connection with the April 15 stabbing at a church in Wakeley. Photo by NSW Police force/EPA-EFE
April 25 (UPI) -- Australian authorities on Thursday charged five juveniles in related terrorism activities and police continued to probe an April 15 stabbing in Wakeley.
The Joint Counter Terrorism Team in Sydney charged a 17-year-old and 14-year-old, both males, with possessing or controlling violent extremist material obtained or accessed using a carriage service. Two more males, both 16, were charged with conspiring to engage in any act in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.
The Australian Federal Police said one male, 17, was charged with conspiring to engage in an act in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act and custody of a knife in a public place.
The two teens charged with possessing violent extremist material appeared in court Thursday where Magistrate Paul Mulroney told the court that the 14-year-old's phone held videos depicting people being run over by cars as well as a cartoon "advocating violence towards homosexual men."
The 17-year-old was denied bail as Mulroney said he had "video of a person in military fatigues providing instructions on making explosive devices," adding the images that led to the charges were "awful, awful, awful."
"It depicts extreme violence, gratuitous violence, it also depicts the methodologies of the commission of violence acts," Mulroney said.
The arrests were made on Wednesday as a result of 13 search warrants executed where electronic devices were taken. The arrests come after the alleged stabbing of Mar Mari Emmanuel, a bishop in the Assyrian Orthodox Church, and three other people during a service.
Gamel Kheir, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, criticized the arrests as "heavy-handed."
"We went from a scenario one week ago where we were clearly told there was a lone wolf, now what has changed in a week is that we are now portraying it as a terrorism cell," Kheir said.
"If that has eventuated, why aren't we kept abreast of these things, if the police want us to support and help them, then we as a community need to know."
