Dutton to be briefed on Hezbollah terror listing

Security agencies are expected to brief Peter Dutton on whether Hezbollah’s military wing should be considered a terrorist group.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Picture: Kym Smith

Security agencies are expected to brief Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton on whether Hezbollah’s military wing should be considered a terrorist group.

The briefing comes after 12 months of lobbying by Jewish groups for the Lebanese organisation to be banned in Australia, following Britain’s decision to do so last year. With the exception of New Zealand, all of Australia’s partners in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance have ­declared Hezbollah a terrorist ­organisation.

New Zealand has proscribed the group’s military wing, while Australia has listed only the wing’s External Security Organisation as a terrorist group.

Security agencies are expected to brief Mr Dutton by April on whether he should consider broadening the listing. The ­Department of Home Affairs said on Monday agencies were monitoring developments to ensure terrorist listings were appropriate.

“The matter of listing Hezbollah’s military wing remains under active review,” a spokesman said.

But Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said the group as a whole should be a proscribed.

“By listing only Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation as a terrorist organisation, rather than Hezbollah as a whole, Australia has been endorsing a ­fiction,” he said.

“Hezbollah leaders themselves have openly and ­repeatedly declared that no substantive separation exists ­between its different wings.

“The organisation from its inception has glorified, promoted and carried out acts of terrorism.”

The Australian revealed on Monday that a bid to have a Sydney man declared a “high-risk terrorist offender” failed as the groups he was accused of supporting — Hezbollah and one of its allies, the Amal party — were not declared terror organisations.

In response, The Australia/­Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said “Australia must ban all of Hezbollah”. The parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security in 2018 recommended that the government consider adding the military wing to the listing.

One committee member said there was now “bipartisan support” for Hezbollah itself to be deemed a terrorist group. The government last year told the committee it would “keep the matter of listing Hezbollah’s military wing under review”.

This came after the Department of Home Affairs told the committee, while it was reviewing the listing, that “any broadening of the listing … would have implications, including for our bilateral relationship with Lebanon”.

The US listed Hezbollah as a terrorist group in 1997 and Canada did likewise in 2002.

Among the attacks attributed to the group was a 2012 bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus ­driver.