By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-11 03:01:28 | Updated at 2025-03-11 18:21:42
15 hours ago
An explosives-filled caravan that Australian politicians earlier described as an antisemitic terrorism plot and a foiled mass-casualty event was staged by criminals in a complicated hoax – and was never meant to be detonated, according to police.
Law enforcement agencies investigating January’s discovery of the caravan on the outskirts of Sydney divulged in a news conference that its placement was concocted by criminals who meant to derive personal gain from tipping off authorities to its presence – a bizarre twist in a saga that followed a months-long wave of antisemitic crimes in Australia.
The cluster of attacks targeting places where Jewish people live, work and study, including a firebombing of a synagogue and a day care centre and several instances of antisemitic vandalism, were committed by “a very small group, and potentially one individual behind all those matters”, David Hudson, deputy police commissioner for the state of New South Wales, told reporters on Monday.
Authorities in January made the unusual claim that none of the 12 they had then arrested in relation to the spate of crimes in Australia’s largest cities Sydney and Melbourne was driven by antisemitic ideology and were instead criminals for hire. Hudson said 14 more arrested on Monday were not motivated by hate either.
But he added he has no doubt that antisemitism in Australia – which has dominated news media and the political sphere following the recent spate of crimes – has experienced “an escalation over the past 18 months” since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
