Focus on Arthur Phillip High School as police hunt radicalised schoolboys

A STUDENT at Arthur Phillip High School who is suspected of recruiting teen gunman Farhad Jabar to a lunchtime prayer group has been suspended.

Sydney shooter’s classmate suspended

A TEENAGER who may have recruited Farhad Jabar to an extremist prayer group at Arthur Phillip High School has been suspended but not expelled.

Police believe the 16-year-old boy may have recruited Jabar to the lunchtime prayer group before he fatally shot NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng, according to Fairfax.

The boy was also charged last year for yelling death threats while driving past a Christian school last year, and his home has been raided twice by the NSW counter-terrorism unit.

His 18-year-old brother is also being held by police and may have been the person who obtained a gun for Jabar to use.

A Department of Education spokesman confirmed to news.com.au that the 16-year-old boy had been suspended.

When asked whether parents at the school had been informed of the suspension, the spokesman said “schools do not publish personal information identifying students without the family’s approval”.

In the past week Arthur Phillip High School in Parramatta has seen one of its students become a terrorist gunman.

Attention has fallen on others too — some are suspected of inciting violence against police in hate-fuelled online posts while other students and former students are believed to be sympathetic to the Islamic State.

Several had relatives caught up in the wave of terror raids throughout western Sydney yesterday morning.

Some in the school community were stunned and worried by the sudden attention, while others said the relationship between boys at the school and the police had been getting worse for some time.

The school is just 300m from a shooting scene where 15-year-old Jabar executed Curtis Cheng last Friday outside Paramatta Police Station.

Jabar then taunted police before he was gunned down by special constables guarding the headquarters.

According to its website 90 per cent of the 1400 students at Arthur Phillip High come from a non-English speaking background and from at least 40 different cultures.

A student from Arthur Phillip High School was arrested in Parramatta yesterday.

There has been noticeable police activity around Arthur Phillip High.

It appears trouble has been brewing for some time within its ranks. A Muslim prayer group had to be suspended by Principal Lynne Goodwin after “disruptive” behaviour, where some students were thought to have been preaching extremism.

And Afghan students complained of being harassed by police and searched while they walked to and from school The Australian reported.

“They see them walking down the street, they’ll ask for IDs ... for no reason.”

Neither Ms Goodwin or any senior staff would be interviewed on Thursday because they were supporting students “to make sure they were OK”.

The Department of Education would not say how the school was responding to the events of the past week and ongoing investigations by police.

A spokesman said: “The Department has strong working relationships with the NSW Police Force to ensure public schools remain one of the safest places in the community”.

One parent, who asked not to be named, said it was a hard situation to understand.

“You just have to trust the police and what they [the school] say, that everything is being done.”

Police patrolled the area around the school and teachers stood watch at all entrances to the school when school resumed after the long weekend.

The broader school community had been kept informed with updates since the shooting last Friday, the parent said.

Earlier this week Ms Goodwin told parents on the school’s online blog NSW Police had advised the school there was no “ongoing threat” as a result of the shooting.

Then Wednesday night it emerged the teen gunman had been recruited by extremists who believed they were under too much surveillance to carry out the terror attack themselves.

And two days ago, there was an arrest of another student, a 17-year-old, for allegedly abusing and threatening police.

It has emerged that other students or former students have been linked with anti-terrorism raids in Sydney or were known supporters of the Islamic State.

In the most recent raids, at locations throughout western Sydney, five men aged between 16 and 22 were arrested.

Police today would not comment on their investigations into students at the school and others throughout Sydney.

[e-mail]

Originally published as Focus on Arthur Phillip High School as police hunt radicalised schoolboys