Australian police: Organized crime network faked synagogue bomb attack plot
Deputy national security commissioner says suspects prepared explosives, then informed authorities with the aim of ‘changing their criminal status’
An alleged plan to attack a Sydney synagogue using a trailer packed with explosives was fabricated by an organized crime network in order to divert police resources, Australian authorities said Monday.
Police in January found explosives in a trailer, or caravan, that could have created a blast wave of 40 meters (130 feet), along with the address of a Sydney synagogue.
But officers said Monday that the discovery was part of a “criminal con job.” The ease with which the trailer was found along with the lack of a detonator suggests there was never any intention to attack Jewish targets.
“The caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” Krissy Barrett, the Australian Federal Police’s deputy commissioner for national security, told a news conference.
“Almost immediately, experienced investigators… believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot – essentially a criminal con job,” she said.
Out of an “abundance of caution,” police followed up terrorism-related tipoffs over the purported plot rather than making public their belief that the information was fake, Barrett said.
Organized criminals in Australia and offshore contrived the scheme, she said.
“Put simply, the plan was the following: organize for someone to buy a caravan, place it with explosives and written material of antisemitic nature, leave it in a specific location, and then, once that happened, inform law enforcement about an impending terror attack against Jewish Australians,” Barrett said.
Police suspect that the person “pulling the strings” hired local criminals to carry out the hoax in the hope of getting “changes to their criminal status,” she said.
Barrett declined to elaborate on the motivation but said criminals sometimes seek to leverage information to get a reduced jail sentence or other benefits.
Jewish group expressed alarm at the revelation.
“The possible role of organized crime in orchestrating major antisemitic attacks adds a chilling new element to the antisemitism crisis,” Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said in a statement. “Synagogues have been burned, childcare centers have been burned, and whether it’s been done for financial gain or as part of an antisemitic ideology or movement, in either case, it’s equally terrifying.”
Ryvchin said the revelations hadn’t brought any great relief to the Jewish community.
“Now we have organized crime seeking to intimidate and terrorise the Jewish community for some unknown and bewildering reasons. It seems to raise more questions than it answers. It certainly won’t lead to a mass outpouring of relief on the part of the Jewish community,” Ryvchin said.
“Part of the motivation for this attack was to install fear in the Jewish community, which has been on knife’s edge since the seventh of October, and we need to remain vigilant,” said Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, referring to the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which started the war in Gaza.
Police have yet to make any arrests in relation to the planning of the fabricated plot, but have gone public with the information in order to provide comfort to the Jewish community in Sydney, Dave Hudson, New South Wales Police deputy commissioner, told the news conference.
“It was about causing chaos within the community, causing threat, causing angst, diverting police resources away from their day jobs, to have them focus on matters that would allow them to get up to or engage in other criminal activity,” Hudson said.
Police are investigating a suspect involved in an organized crime network, he added.
Meanwhile, detectives probing a string of antisemitic incidents across Sydney — though not the trailer incident specifically — have arrested and charged 14 people, the New South Wales Police said on Tuesday.
The charges include 65 offenses, including taking part in a “criminal group,” arson and destroying property, the department said.
None of those arrested displayed “any form of antisemitic ideology,” according to Hudson.
Investigations into attacks on two Sydney synagogues, the fire bombings of cars, and the spraying of “abhorrent graffiti” on cars and houses indicated it was only “a very, very small group — and potentially one individual behind all these matters,” he said.
Police suspect the same “individual or individuals” were behind both the antisemitic attacks and the trailer hoax, Hudson said.
Leibler thanked police for “taking this seriously and for making these arrests.”
“While on the one hand, the findings provide some relief to the Jewish community, it does not take away from the fact that we’ve had an explosion of antisemitism in this country,” he added.
Australia has suffered a spate of antisemitic attacks since the start of the war, with homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles targeted by vandalism and arson, drawing the ire of the country’s traditional ally Israel.
The number of anti-Jewish incidents in the country quadrupled in the year after the October 7 attack, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
In December 2024, New South Wales launched Strike Force Pearl, whose team includes counter-terrorism and special tactics officers, to investigate antisemitic hate crimes in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, following an arson attack on the Adass Synagogue.
Australia’s federal police also launched Operation Avalite to investigate the surge in antisemitic crimes.
