Schoolmates of ‘jihadi’ Perth teen circulate bombing video

The principal of the high school attended by the 16-year-old self-described ‘jihadi’ shot dead by police, James Hollands, has moved to reassure students after online threats. | WATCH

Images of the teen who was shot dead by police after stabbing a man.

The principal of the high school attended by the 16-year-old self-described “jihadi” shot dead by police at the weekend has moved to reassure students about their safety after a series of threatening messages were posted on an internal school forum.

The messages, posted to the account under the name of a student of Rossmoyne Senior High School, said they had “always planned to shoot up at the school”.

“All I’m saying is ALLAHU AKBAR I WILL KILL THE N… TOMORROW,” one of the messages read.

In an email to parents and students, Rossmoyne principal Alan Brown said the disturbing messages were the result of a “hacking incident” and that there was no risk to students.

“Police do not have any concerns for the safety of the students, teachers, and the broader community, and WA Police continue to work with the Department of Education to identify the source of the messages,” he wrote.

The radicalised 16-year-old was killed by police on Saturday night after stabbing a male stranger in a Willetton car park and has since been identified as year 11 Rossmoyne student James Hollands.

Hollands had been under a deradicalisation program for the past two years amid growing concerns among parents and students about the behaviour of him and a cohort of boys at the school.

Video footage circulating among the school community since the shooting shows Hollands throwing a small homemade explosive device into a school toilet block, folllowed by the sounds of an explosion, as a group of other students look on.

The teens are then heard laughing and yelling.

It has also emerged that Hollands was forced to have a phone without internet ­access to keep him away from ­extremist ­material and had officers at his house on a regular basis for two years.

As the quiet Perth suburb of Willetton and Hollands’ prestigious school Rossmoyne Senior High were left reeling by his horrific ­attempt at jihad, neighbours, parents and authorities painted a picture of a child who “went mad” on radical online propaganda and whose fatal ­attempt at a terror act shocked even the imam assigned to him by a deradicalisation program.

The boy’s mother was visited by a supportive family at her home near Rossmoyne on Tuesday as neighbours said the boy had been increasingly attracting police ­attention over recent years. The WA Department of Education late on Monday confirmed there had previously been an incident at Rossmoyne Senior High involving a toilet block, after school parents and WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam flagged that the boy had set fire to the toilets using a homemade bomb. The ­department said the incident had been reported to and investigated by WA Police.

WA’s most senior imam, Sheikh Mohammed Shakeeb, said the Islamic scholar assigned to help deradicalise the boy was in shock and called for authorities to let him and other Muslim leaders know who was in the deradicalisation program so they could be ­better prepared to help stop future attacks.

It came as WA Premier Roger Cook confirmed that parents at the school had raised concerns with authorities over the boy and a cohort of like-minded students.

Sheikh Shakeeb told The Australian that he and other Muslim leaders needed to be better informed about those in their community who had caught the attention of the authorities.

“We would like to be informed of this. We can’t control who walks in the door so we would like to know if someone has been identified by police or some other authority as having a fixation on violence and extreme ideologies and so on,” he said.

“These ideologies don’t come from local sources.”

The scene following the police shooting in Willetton.

He said the imam assigned to mentor the teen as part of the Countering Violent Extremism Program had worked very hard to build an understanding with the boy. That imam felt he knew the teen and had been “torn up” since his violent rampage and death.

Sheikh Shakeeb said he believed the imam assigned to mentor the boy had been asked by police not to tell anyone at the time for privacy reasons. That imam was now hurting very badly and had fallen silent since news of the boy’s death emerged.

“He didn’t expect this,” Sheikh Shakeeb said. “But then when you are dealing with mental health ­patients, something out of the ­ordinary can happen.”

He said the boy had occasionally been seen at mosques around Perth and seemed “very nice” but they did not know him or that he was in the Countering Violent Extremism program.

Mr Cook on Monday confirmed that parent concerns about the boy and a cohort of like-minded children at Rossmoyne had been raised with the state in the lead-up to Saturday’s ­incident.

“We can confirm that a letter was sent to the Minister for Education and as is appropriate the minister automatically referred that letter to the education department for action,” he said.

“The education department obviously took that information on-board and continued to manage that.”

Mr Cook said it was up to the state’s education department to clarify if there were further issues inside the school, but he did reveal that the boy had for the past two years been able to access only a basic phone without connectivity to the internet as part of his involvement with the deradical­isation program.

The Premier said he did not know which online platforms radicalised the boy initially.

Since the boy entered the program two years ago, his online activity had been strictly limited.

“As part of the Countering Violent Extremism program, the individual in question only had a very basic telephone,” Mr Cook said. “So when he came into contact with the … program there is a range of measures and I think that includes limiting his access to online media and social media.

WA Premier Roger Cook. Picture: ABC News

“This young gentleman in confronting a range of complex issues in his life has taken on board extremist attitudes. That was the issue that we have been managing for some time now.

“It is incredibly regrettable.”

Ms Mettam questioned why authorities hadn’t taken more ­action in relation to the boy, given concerns expressed by parents at Rossmoyne in the months leading up to Saturday’s incident.

She said she had spoken to parents from the school who had told her that the boy had been involved in making a homemade bomb that blew up some toilets at the school.

She also said there had been concerns raised by parents at the school that a cohort of boys, including the 16-year-old, had been trying to “recruit” more students.

“He had plans to interrupt an assembly in the most devastating of ways and had been able to continue to learn in a public mainstream school,” Ms Mettam said.

“There were a number of red flags raised by parents in this community and the Minister for Education continued to fob off those very real concerns.”

WA Police Minister Paul Pap­alia said that while police were still investigating the circumstances that lead to Saturday night’s incident, many of the reports about the boy and the other students at Rossmoyne were “hearsay”.

“There was no opportunity for police to lock him up because of his views – we don’t do that in Australia,” Mr Papalia said.

Students filed into Rossmoyne on Monday morning amid a ­sombre mood following the news of the boy’s death.

One parent, Niranji Wickramasinghe, told reporters outside the school that the dead boy had been a friendly and helpful child. Ms Wickramasinghe has a daughter in year 11 – the same year the dead boy was in – and a son in year 9, and both of her children had interacted with the boy.

“He was a very kind-hearted and helpful child. My son who is in year nine said he was very friendly, he had helped them before,” she said.

Ms Wickramasinghe said the boy was a good child who had underlying mental health issues and who had “gone mad” after watching videos online.

Ms Wickramasinghe said her children had believed that the boy’s threats about targeting the school were nothing more than an attempt at humour.

“Sometimes he would say ‘I’m going to bomb this bus’ and kids were laughing, they were thinking it was a joke,” she said.

Speaking through tears, she said she believed more could have been done to help the boy.