Couple were ‘looking for a caravan’ as police defend silence over explosives plot

Police believe NSW’s anti-Semitic attacks, including an explosive-laced caravan set to target Jewish Australians, were ‘orchestrated’ as two ‘peripheral’ actors spruiked they were ‘looking for a caravan’.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb, front, speaks to the media in Sydney on Thursday.

NSW Police believe the state’s spate of anti-Semitic attacks, including revelations a caravan laced with explosives was set to target Jewish Australians, was “orchestrated” as it defended withholding the discovery for more than a week.

It comes as two alleged “peripheral” actors to the explosive-riddled caravan, including the vehicle’s owner, remain in police custody after unrelated arrests, believed to be Tammie Farrugia and partner Scott Marshall, who had spruiked they were “looking for a caravan” on social media.

Police announced on Wednesday the January 19 discovery of the caravan abandoned at the side of the road in Dural, northwest Sydney, which contained enough Powergel explosives to create a 40-metre blast and a note with addresses of Jewish people, including a synagogue. Sky News anchor Sharri Markson reported the targets of the attack were the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Great Synagogue in Sydney’s city centre.

On December 6, Farrugia allegedly wrote on Facebook that she was “looking for a caravan”, encouraging other users if they had one for sale to “hit me up” – a day before police believed the caravan first appeared in the area.

Speaking to the media in Dural on Thursday, resident Robert, who declined to give his last name, alleged that police arrived at a property he owns with a search warrant referencing Farrugia and Marshall.

The property is rented out but was near where the caravan was found abandoned on Derriwong Rd. Robert told reporters that police “barged down the doors” and probed the tenants on what they knew about the caravan, who he said had “nothing to do” with the caravan.

Tammie Farrugia and Scott Marshall.

A Facebook post made by Tammie Farrugia in December asking for a caravan.

Farrugia was charged in January over her alleged involvement in Woollahra’s second anti-Semitic vandalism attack last year, although neither she nor Marshall – arrested for unrelated weapons offences – have been charged in relation to the caravan incident.

The pair’s Liverpool apartment was quiet on Thursday morning, which had visible signs of being raided by police.

Neighbours say the couple moved in around six months ago, and police had been at the apartment last week.

A CCTV camera on the balcony appeared to have been disconnected.

On Thursday, NSW Police and Premier Chris Minns defended the decision not to disclose the discovery earlier and NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said its leak to the media had “compromised” ongoing investigations in what could have been a “mass casualty event”.

“The fact this information is now in the public domain has compromised our investigation and been detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used,” she said, adding the threat wasn’t disclosed partly due to that the “risk” had been mitigated.

Jewish leaders, however, lamented that they’d been left in the dark until reading of the caravan in Wednesday’s media reports, saying the need for “clandestine investigations” needed to be balanced against the public’s right – particularly at-threat Jewish people – to know.

“I think they should have told us earlier, before it hit the media, because the impact on the community then could have been managed,” the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s co-chief executive, Peter Wertheim, said.

“When people are kept in the dark, they jump to all sorts of conclusions and they speculate, and that just encourages the very panic that the perpetrators are trying to create.”

The caravan investigation has passed from NSW Police’s Strike Force to the Joint Counter Terrorism Team, given the magnitude of the explosives and alleged offending, but it has not been designated as a terror incident.

Investigators, however, are probing whether the caravan was ever intended to reach its intended “targets” and could instead have been abandoned for police to find.

Dural resident Robert speaks to the media near where the caravan was discovered. Picture: Damian Shaw

On Wednesday, Mr Minns said while that description lay with the police, he said the “only way” to describe the incident was “terrorism”.

Police can still charge any offender with terrorism offences, however, without that designation.

“I often get asked – and I want to clarify – about whether or not there needs to be a declaration of a terrorism event,” Commissioner Webb said.

“That relates to whether there’s a need for additional powers. That is separate to the issue of whether police can charge with terrorism offences.”

Ten people have been charged already under Strike Force Pearl, including Farrugia, and NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Dave Hudson said it appeared increasingly likely that there was a degree of “co-ordination and orchestration” between some of the anti-Semitic attacks.

“We believe that some of (the attacks) are being orchestrated by others... We haven’t identified any of the individuals with any specific ideology that would cause them to commit these acts,” he said.

“And that indicates to us that they are being orchestrated in some manner.

Tammie Farrugia and Scott Marshall’s Liverpool apartment, which was raided by police. Neighbours said the pair had moved in around six months ago.

“We have identified links between certain jobs which gives us some indication there is a level of co-ordination above those perpetrating the offences.”

Last week, The Australian revealed how an unknown kingpin under a “James Bond” alias had seemingly paid four men to allegedly firebomb at Jewish kosher deli in Bondi in October – a nearby brewery sharing a similar name was inadvertently targeted on the first instance – who has yet to be identified.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said earlier this month police were investigating whether overseas actors were paying criminals-for-hire to carry out the hate-motivated attacks, although state police – while “not ruling anything out” – believe any alleged “ringleader” was “domestic related”.

It comes as police investigated three incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism overnight in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, in Eastlakes, Eastgardens and Maroubra, where a house next to a Jewish school was graffitied with “you f..king Jews’.

Mr Minns said he and police would leave “no stone unturned” in investigating the caravan incident, and the increasing spate of anti-Semitic vandalism attacks.

“There are some terrible people in our community, I’m ashamed to say it – but that’s the truth,” he said.

“Bad morals, bad ethics, bad people that will commit these acts, but Australians stand united against this appalling racism.

“No stone will be left unturned or upturned in order to catch individuals who are responsible for these activities.”

He defended how NSW Police handled the incident, saying it was a “serious police clandestine investigation” and that there was a need for detectives to pursue inquiries sometimes out of the public eye.

NSW Premier Chris Minns.

NSW Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson.

“It was the right decision (to not disclose the discovery),” he said.

Speaking on Thursday, Anthony Albanese backed the JCTT and state forces to “keep Australians safe” and chase down the alleged offenders, while Peter Dutton said the caravan’s discovery was “horrifying and sickening”, calling on the federal government to commit additional resources to protect synagogues and Jewish schools.

Berowra Liberal MP Julian Leeser – who is Jewish and whose electorate takes in Dural – reiterated discontent that leaders from his community were only made aware of the discovery through the media, urging the Prime Minister to disclose when he was briefed on the matter.

“I think that the police need to allow the community to find out about these investigations at the earliest possible occasion and that’s a matter for judgement for the police and ultimately a responsibility of the premier,” he said.

“We also want to know when the prime minister and senior ministers at the federal level knew about this and what, indeed, they have done in this space.”