Specialists have questioned the choice by Queensland police to shrink back from making use of a terrorism label to final week’s killing of two younger constables and a neighbour at Wieambilla, saying it marks a missed alternative to open the broader dialogue now wanted about extremist threats.
Whereas the state’s counterterrorism unit is concerned within the sprawling probe for the coroner tasked with laying out what occurred on the agricultural property and why, Deputy Commissioner Tracy Linford mentioned they had been but to deem it a terrorist act.
Gareth and Stacey Prepare claimed in a web-based video they’d killed police who had come to kill them.
“At this level, there’s nothing actually to point that,” Linford, whose position contains government accountability over crime and counterterrorism, mentioned in response to a query from this masthead at Thursday’s media briefing.
Linford defined that whereas the three Prepare relations behind the violence appeared to carry anti-government, anti-police and conspiracist views, they weren’t linked to “any specific group” that will have helped or impressed them.
Regardless of this, Gareth Prepare had been lively on a outstanding sovereign citizen website, shared pandemic conspiracies, and labelled himself an “extremist”, whereas an account linked to his spouse, Stacey, had interacted with a US-based conspiracist.
Deakin College senior analysis fellow Dr Josh Roose mentioned a proper connection to broader teams was “not a prerequisite of terrorism”, with many people radicalised alone on-line into violence by Islamic extremists nonetheless labelled as such.
Whereas ideological, political or non secular motivation was usually troublesome to show, notably when it got here to prosecuting in courtroom, Roose mentioned that from Linford’s feedback it may very well be “strongly recommended that she’s probably talking a little bit bit prematurely”.
“From what we do know primarily based on reporting … the people had been extremely influenced by conspiracy theories, sovereign citizen narratives, evangelical apocalypticism, and we don’t but know what else,” he mentioned.
