Melbourne, Australia — A 16-year-old who was shot dead by police after stabbing a man in the city of Perth on Australia’s western coast had been in a deradicalization program but had no links to an alleged teenage network. extremists in the east coast city of Sydney. authorities said.
The boy had participated in the federally funded countering violent extremism program for two years but had no criminal record, Western Australia Police Minister Paul Papalia said Monday.
“The challenge we face with people like the 16-year-old in this incident is that he is known to hold dangerous views and could potentially become radicalised,” Papalia told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “…but the problem with individuals like this is that They can act at short notice and without warning and be very dangerous.
Regarding the possibility that the boy may have been radicalized, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was concerned that social media promoted extreme positions.
“It is a dynamic that is not just a matter of the government. It is a problem for our entire society, whether it is violent extremism, misogyny and violence against women. “It’s an issue that of course worries me,” Albanese told reporters.
Western Australia Police Commissioner Colonel Blanch said the boy had called police on Saturday night saying he was about to commit “acts of violence” but did not say where. Minutes later, a member of the public reported seeing the boy with a knife in the parking lot of a hardware store to police.
Three police officers responded, one armed with a gun and two with stun guns. Police used both stun guns, but they failed to incapacitate the boy before he died from a single shot, Blanch said.
The victim of the stabbing is a man in his 30s who was wounded in the back. He was in a serious but stable condition in a Perth hospital, police said.
Blanch said members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with police about the boy’s behavior before he was killed on Saturday.
Police said the stabbing had characteristics of a terrorist attack, but did not declare it as such. Factors that could influence that decision include whether state police need federal resources, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s domestic spy agency.
Blanch said the Western Australian Police Force’s investigation did not require additional federal resources and he was confident the situation was different to Sydney.
“We are dealing with complex issues, both mental health and online radicalization,” Blanch said Sunday. “But we believe he is acting alone and we are not concerned at this time that there is an ongoing network or other concerns that might have been seen in Sydney.”
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb had within hours declared the stabbing of an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and priest in a Sydney church on April 15 a terrorist act. The arrested boy was later charged with committing a terrorist act. In the subsequent investigation, six more teenagers were charged with terrorism-related crimes.
Police alleged the seven were part of a network that “adhered to a violent and religiously motivated extremist ideology.”
Some Muslim leaders have criticized Australian police for declaring last month’s church stabbing a terrorist act, but not the attack two days earlier at a Sydney shopping mall, in which six people were killed and a dozen wounded. wounds. The attacker, 40, was shot dead by police.
The man had a history of schizophrenia and most of the victims he targeted were women. Police have yet to reveal the man’s motive.
The church attack is only the third classified by Australian authorities as a terrorist act since 2018.
In December 2022, three Christian fundamentalists shot dead two police officers and a bystander in an ambush near the community of Wieambilla, in the state of Queensland. The shooters were later killed by police.
In November 2018, a Somali-born Muslim stabbed three pedestrians in central Melbourne, killing one, before being shot dead by police.