The 16-year-old boy accused of carrying out a terrorist attack at a western Sydney church had not attended school for months and displayed increasing disobedience at home before the shock stabbing of a bishop on Monday night.
Meanwhile, police released dramatic footage of their first arrest over the unrest that erupted outside the Christ The Good Shepherd Church, showing terrorism police yell “police search warrant, open the door” at the Doonside house before telling a 19-year-old man he was under arrest.
He was subsequently charged with riot, affray and destroy/damage property during public disorder. He has been refused bail to appear in Blacktown Local Court on Thursday.
More than 70 police officers have been redeployed to conduct “high-visibility patrols to maintain community safety”, Police Minister Yasmin Catley announced on Wednesday, while another 32 are investigating a riot that erupted in the aftermath of the attack.
The 16-year-old accused of carrying out a terrorist attack at a church in western Sydney.
The 16-year-old, who cannot legally be identified, allegedly stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Wakeley during a livestreamed Bible session shortly after 7pm on Monday.
On Wednesday evening, the boy remained in hospital under police guard at an undisclosed location, and has not been charged. Catley told Sky News “conversations … have yet to take place” because he had not been released by medical staff.
“Police will go through all of this youth’s life with a fine-tooth comb” to probe “radicalisation or related interactions”, Catley said.
Police Commissioner Karen Webb has pointed to comments “centred around religion” allegedly made by the teenage accused in the lead-up to the attack, which has been classed as religiously motivated terrorism.
Bishop Emmanuel and another clergyman received non-life-threatening injuries. The boy lost a finger during the attack, according to Premier Chris Minns.
The teenager had not attended his high school for more than six months, a source not authorised to speak publicly said. In 2020, he had been suspended for bringing a knife onto school grounds.
Police make a first arrest over the Wakeley public order incident.Credit: NSW Police
The boy’s father had also seen signs of increasing “disobedience”, according to an Islamic community leader who accommodated the father at Lakemba Mosque on Tuesday night.
The father had spent the night of the attack driving around western Sydney with a friend, too afraid to go home, before turning to Gamel Kheir, a lawyer and secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association.
“He truly was in shock, he broke my heart,” Kheir told this masthead.
“He said ‘I want to see my son’, he was distraught, in shock, too scared to go home.”
A 19-year-old man was taken to Blacktown police station on Wednesday.Credit: NSW Police
Kheir persuaded the man to spend the night at the mosque with himself and a number of other attendees, who had assembled to defend it against threats of firebombing made in the wake of the stabbing.
According to Kheir, while the boy had been disobedient, his father said there were no signs of him becoming radicalised. “There was nothing he could see that he had gone that far down,” he said.
The Lebanese Muslim Association will undertake an investigation into online radicalisation and how to stop people from consuming radical content.
Police on Wednesday were processing arrest warrants for members of a crowd who rioted outside the Christ The Good Shepherd Church on Monday, following the stabbing. At 5:40pm, they made their first arrest, a 19-year-old man from Doonside in Sydney’s west.
In the footage released on Wednesday night, police officers stormed into the Power Street house and brought the man outside, saying “the commissioner of police told you we’re coming. We are here”.
The man was told he was under arrest, handcuffed, put in a police vehicle and taken to Blacktown Police Station.
Several officers were injured in the riot and paramedics took shelter inside the building as crowd members threw projectiles and damaged 51 police vehicles. Police and ambulance officers were eventually evacuated from the church in an armoured vehicle.
Police were also patrolling at mosques on the city’s western outskirts on Wednesday to provide extra security. Several worshippers told this masthead the mosques were quieter than usual.
Muhmood Wehbe leaves the Wednesday night prayer session at Bonnyrigg Mosque.Credit: Dean Sewell
Speaking through an Arabic translator, Muhmood Wehbe, who prayed at Bonnyrigg Mosque, said what happened at the church was “something we all condemn and are not satisfied with”.
“Islam is the religion of love and peace,” he said.
Muzzy Elsett, who attended the Othman Bin Affan mosque in Cabramatta West, said the stabbing at Christ the Good Shepherd Church was tragic, “like any attack”.
“We don’t preach harm on anyone,” he said.
Muzzy Elsett, a regular at the Othman Bin Affan Mosque in Cabramatta.Credit: Dean Sewell
“If anything, in our religion in Islam, even smiling to a person is an act of charity. You get rewarded for that.”
While not condoning the actions of the 16-year-old accused, who is a Muslim, Elsett said Bishop Emmanuel had appeared in several videos making disrespectful comments about the Prophet Muhammad.
He said many in the Islamic community had been aware of these comments by the “TikTok priest” before the attack.
Forensic police gather evidence at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley.Credit: Oscar Coleman
The bishop has acknowledged that an interview he gave last year on a US podcast had upset some Muslims, but also said he loved and prayed for his “beloved Muslim world”.
Following the fatal shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng by 15-year-old Farhad Jabar in 2015, the NSW government announced a five-year $47 million program to counter violent extremism, which included schools initiative.
The schools program has since been superseded by another designed to support students including those who are vulnerable and at risk, focusing on wellbeing, attendance and behaviour.
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