MELBOURNE: A man charged with torching a Melbourne synagogue, in an antisemitic attack that Australia accuses Iran of directing, was remanded in custody when he appeared in court Wednesday.
Ali Younes, 20, became the second suspect last week to be charged for the December arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue. Police allege three masked arsonists dowsed the building’s interior with a liquid accelerant before igniting it, causing extensive damage and injuring a worshipper.
Younes, who lives in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday by video link from jail.
His first court appearance came a day after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard of directing arson attacks on the synagogue and a Sydney kosher eatery, Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, two months earlier.
Iran denied Australia’s allegations Tuesday through its Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei, who tried to connect the attacks to the challenges the government faced with Israel after announcing Australia would recognize a Palestinian state.
No links to Iran have been reported from the court appearances of those charged so far over the Sydney and Melbourne blazes that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) says it has “credible evidence” Iran orchestrated.
Younes, who spoke only twice during the brief hearing, was remanded in custody and ordered to appear again in court on Dec. 4.
Alleged arsonist’s co-accused remains behind bars
Younes’ co-accused, Giovanni Laulu, a 21-year-old man from Melbourne’s western outskirts, will also appear in court on Dec. 4.
Laulu was arrested last month and remains behind bars. Both are charged with arson, reckless conduct endangering life and car theft. Arson carries a potential sentence of 15 years in prison. The other two charges are each punishable by 10 years in prison.
The crime was declared a terrorist act early in the investigation. Such a declaration increases resources available to the investigators.
No terrorism charges, which can carry longer prison sentences, have yet been laid.
Both suspects were charged by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team that brings together law enforcement officials from the state’s Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO, the nation’s main domestic spy agency.
ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said Tuesday the Revolutionary Guard used a “complex web of proxies to hide its involvement” in the two antisemitic attacks in Australia.
Benjamin Klein, a board member of the damaged synagogue, said he had been warned by an official in the prime minister’s office that Iran would be blamed.
“It is quite shocking and traumatic to think that a peaceful, loving shule (synagogue) in Melbourne is targeted and attacked by terrorists from overseas,” Klein said.
Klein said state and federal authorities had been supportive with increased security at a temporary location where the synagogue’s congregation now gathers.
Advocate says Jewish Australians ‘fearful they could be next’
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an advocacy group, said the owner of the targeted restaurant in Sydney was still processing news that the Revolutionary Guard had been accused of the arson.
“The fact that a business is targeted makes every Jewish Australian fearful that they could be next,” Ryvchin said.
Two Sydney men, Wayne Dean Ogden, 40, and Juon Amuoi, 26, have been charged with executing that attack and remain in custody.
Sayed Mohammed Moosawi, a 32-year-old Sydney-based former chapter president of the Nomads biker gang, has been charged with directing the fire bombing. He has been released on bail.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday continued to refuse to make public the specifics of how Iran had allegedly directed the two crimes, citing ongoing investigations into other antisemitic attacks. Authorities say they also didn’t want to jeopardize the fair trials of suspects already charged by making public evidence that might not be admissible in court.
“It’s very clear from the advice that we received from ASIO that both the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney and the Adass Israel Synagogue there in Melbourne were arisen from Iran, from the Iran Revolutionary Guard. And that is them working in concert with criminal elements both overseas and here domestically,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Expelled Iranian ambassador remains in Australia
Australia is severing diplomatic ties with Iran over what Albanese described as an Iranian “attack on our social fabric and who we are.”
Iranian Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi, the first ambassador to be expelled by Australia since World War II, was given 72 hours from Tuesday morning to leave Australia. Three of his fellow expelled Iranian diplomats were given a week to leave.
Sadeghi was seen leaving and returning to the embassy by car Wednesday. The Associated Press’ call to the embassy on Wednesday was automatically placed on hold but never answered.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Wednesday urged all Australians in Iran to leave immediately and warned travelers not to go there because Australia no longer had an embassy in Tehran. Australian diplomats had been moved to an unnamed third country for their own safety, she said.
“The Iranian regime is an unpredictable regime, a regime which we have seen is capable of aggression and violence,” Wong said.
