Australia investigates suspected foreign financing of anti-Semitic attacks | Crime news

Police believe “foreign actors” are paying local criminals to commit crimes amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents.

Australia is investigating suspicions that offshore funding is behind a rise in anti-Semitic crimes.

Detectives are investigating Anti-Semitic Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday that the attacks that occurred across the country were concluded by foreign actors paying local criminals to commit them. But he refused to comment on the suspected source of funding.

“It’s important for people to understand where some of these attacks are coming from, and some of them… appear to be committed by people who don’t have a particular cause, who don’t have ideological motivations, but are paid actors,” Albanese told reporters.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police “believe hired criminals may be behind some of the incidents.”

He added that investigations are underway to determine “who is paying these criminals, where they are located, whether they are in Australia or abroad, and what their motives are.”

Arson

The comments came following a meeting of state police chiefs to discuss the increase in anti-Semitic crimes in Australia since last year war Talks between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, and have escalated in recent months.

Masked arsonists threw petrol bombs at a synagogue in Melbourne in December. Vandals They set fire to a childcare center in Sydney, set fire to cars in predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods, and sprayed inner-city synagogues with red paint and graffiti.

85% of the country’s Jewish population lives in Sydney and Melbourne.

After the Sydney child care center fire, New South Wales Police said the number of investigators working in the Strike Force Pearl squad, set up to investigate anti-Semitic crimes, had doubled from 20 to 40.

Detectives arrested 33-year-old Adam Edward Mull on Tuesday night and charged him with attempting to burn down a synagogue in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown on January 11. His alleged accomplice is also expected to be arrested soon, police said.

Kershaw told federal and state government leaders at a news conference on Tuesday that police were investigating the involvement of young people in recent incidents, and whether they had been radicalized online and encouraged to commit anti-Semitic acts.