Man wanted for Melbourne synagogue firebombing arrested in Iraq -- Australian police

Commissioner says arrested man was national security threat and ‘number one priority’; Australian authorities previously traced attack’s funding to Iran’s IRGC

Iraqi officials have arrested a man wanted by Australian Federal Police as a person of interest in the investigation into a spate of firebombings, including an antisemitic attack on a Melbourne synagogue, police said on Wednesday.

The December 2024 arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne gutted much of the building.

Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador in August after the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation traced the funding of the individuals who set fire to the synagogue — as well as the suspects in a Sydney arson attack targeting the Jewish community — to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the arrested man, Kazem Hamad, was a threat to national security and that she had identified him as her “number one priority.”

Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said in a statement that Kadhim Malik Hamad Rabah al-Hajami had been arrested as part of a drug investigation, after a request from Australia.

Barrett said Iraqi officials had made an independent decision to arrest the man in their own criminal investigation, after Australian Federal Police provided information to Iraqi law enforcement late last year.

Two Jewish men stand outside the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Melbourne, December 7, 2024, a day after it was gutted in an arson attack. (AAP Image/Rachael Ward/Reuters)

“This arrest is a significant disruption to an alleged serious criminal and his alleged criminal enterprise in Australia,” she said in a statement.

In October, Barrett said that in addition to being a suspect in arson attacks in Australia linked to the tobacco trade, the man was “a person of interest in the investigation into the alleged politically-motivated arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue” in Melbourne.

Hamad, previously convicted in Australia for drug trafficking offenses, was deported from Australia to Iraq in 2023.

Iran has a history of targeting Jews and Israelis abroad, especially in South America and Europe.

Australia’s Jewish community is reeling from a deadly terror attack that targeted a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach last month. The community has charged the government with failing to protect it from rising antisemitism.