January 30, 2025
Thursday 30 January 2025
Perry Duffin, Riley Walter, Max Maddison and David Crowe
The Age
The owner of a caravan containing the address of a Sydney synagogue and enough stolen explosives to create a 40-metre blast wave is in police custody.
The owner of the van, which was found at Dural in Sydney’s north-west on January 19, has not been charged in relation to the discovery of the explosives but has been previously arrested for other alleged offending, the Herald understands.
It is unclear how long they have been in custody or what offences they have been charged with.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson on Wednesday evening said no arrests were directly linked to the discovery, but several “around the periphery” of the potential caravan attack had been made. Those people remain in custody, he said.
Those arrested were picked up by Strike Force Pearl, which was established to combat the waves of antisemitic attacks across Sydney. But the caravan plot was so serious, Hudson said, it was escalated out of the strike force and handed to the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team.
Police and NSW Premier Chris Minns on Wednesday evening defended staying silent on the “very serious threat” and potential “mass casualty event” for 10 days, after the investigation by the country’s elite anti-terror team leaked to the media. The revelation comes after waves of antisemitic attacks have rocked Sydney and left the Jewish community shaken.
Police were called to Derriwong Road on January 19 after a local discovered and moved an abandoned caravan filled with explosives. The caravan had been parked on the roadside in a hazardous position between December 7 and January 19.
The Powergel explosives found inside were believed to have been stolen from a mine site and were powerful enough to create a 40-metre blast wave.
The address of a synagogue was found in the caravan, police confirmed, and security agencies were called in as the caravan was seized.
“There’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism,” Minns said.
“This would strike terror into the community, particularly the Jewish community, and it must be met with the full resources of the government. And I want to assure the people of NSW that’s exactly what’s happening.”
The Joint Counter-Terrorism Team, which combines state and Commonwealth agencies including the Australian Federal Police and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, has taken over the investigation and tasked more than 100 officers to catch the perpetrators.
Hudson said police had “no information that there are further explosives in our community in relation to conducting antisemitic attacks anywhere”.
“We believe that we have contained, appropriately, this current threat,” he said.
While Minns was told on January 20 and national cabinet was held on January 21, the meeting of state and federal leaders did not discuss the investigation because operational matters are not usually put to the group. The office of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not say when he was told.
“The full resources of the state of NSW and NSW Police have been deployed to confront this very serious threat to our community,” Minns said.
On Wednesday night, Albanese described the actions as an attempt at terror.
“This was clearly aimed at terrorising the community,” he said.
Albanese “unequivocally” condemned the act and said hate and extremism had “no place in Australian society”.
“The NSW Police have people in custody and continue with other agencies, including those involved in AFP Special Operation Avalite to investigate threats, violence and hatred towards the Australian Jewish community, and take action and hold people to account for crimes,” Albanese said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton labelled the discovery “as sickening as it is horrifying” and called on the federal government to reveal when it was briefed about the incident and “what steps they took to protect Australia’s Jewish community”.
“It is a grave and sinister escalation in this insidious rise of unchecked antisemitism in our country,” Dutton said in a social media post on Wednesday night, calling for the federal government to commit additional resources, including extra security at synagogues and Jewish schools, for “reassurance and deterrence”.
Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson also called for answers about why the discovery was kept secret and when authorities briefed the prime minister and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
“The apparent discovery of a roadside bomb in NSW targeting the Jewish community is an incredibly disturbing development in an escalating domestic terrorism crisis,” Paterson said on social media.
“The prime minister and minister for home affairs must explain when they were first briefed on this matter, what action they took to protect the community and why they thought it was appropriate to keep it a secret for this long.”
Hudson said the threat to the community had not been eliminated, but “mitigated”.
“The discovery and the detection of the caravan with an amount of explosives was not going to be used in the normal antisemitic attack that we have seen occur in Sydney, such as graffiti and arson attacks. This is certainly an escalation of that with the use of explosives that have the potential to cause a great deal of damage,” Hudson said.
Hudson said police were conducting a clandestine investigation and planned to tell the public “very soon”. Instead, the investigation leaked in the press.
Minns pushed back when asked why the Jewish community and wider public were not made aware of the threat 10 days ago.
“There’s a very good reason that police don’t detail methods and tactics and that’s so that criminals don’t understand what police are getting up to in their investigations,” he said.
“Just because it wasn’t being conducted on the front pages of newspapers does not mean this was not an urgent in fact the number one priority of NSW Police.”
No particular ideology had been identified as a motivation behind a possible attack, but none were being ruled out, Hudson said.
Minns said it was “with great regret” that he could not guarantee antisemitic violence would not escalate further.
“There’s bad actors in our community,” he said.
“Badly motivated, bad ideologies, bad morals, bad ethics, bad people, they’re intent on doing harm to others in their community, people they’ve never met before, purely on the basis of their religion. It’s hateful, it’s an ideology that we need to stamp out.”
The discovery comes after a spate of antisemitic attacks that sent shockwaves through Sydney’s Jewish community in recent months, including the firebombing of a Maroubra childcare centre on January 21.
Video of the centre ablaze showed the words “f--- the Jews” sprayed in black paint on a wall. The building was unoccupied at the time, and there were no injuries. No arrests have been made over the blaze.
Four days earlier, the former home of Australian Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin was targeted in a firebombing, with two vehicles set ablaze, while other vehicles were vandalised with antisemitic graffiti in Dover Heights.
The home, which Ryvchin sold in 2023, was also splashed with red paint.
CCTV showed two people dressed in dark clothing pouring accelerant on the road before setting it alight. No arrests have been made.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim labelled the discovery “alarming”.
“We have also been assured that the matter is being thoroughly investigated by the police to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, who was involved and what their motives were. It would be inappropriate to comment further until the facts have been confirmed. Given the recent attacks against the Jewish community the sooner that happens, the better,” he said.
