The legal criteria were, according to the police, respected. The Australian police justified themselves this Wednesday for having described as “terrorist” the stabbing attack on a bishop by a 16-year-old boy in a church in Sydney (Australia). Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed on Monday during a sermon broadcast live in an Assyrian church in the suburbs of Sydney. The religious and several other people were hospitalized without their lives being in danger and the young attacker was arrested.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said on Wednesday that she had described the attack as "terrorist" hours after the attack, in strict accordance with state law. A 2002 law states that a terrorist act is one that harms a person, is motivated by a political, religious or ideological cause and aims to intimidate the public. “I made this statement without hesitation,” she told ABC, saying she understood the questions from representatives of religious communities on this subject.
An open investigation
The qualification of “terrorism” does not mean that the teenager will be charged with terrorism, she clarified. Following this qualification, an investigation was opened involving the state police, the federal police, as well as the intelligence services. The bishop, whose sermons broadcast on the Internet were widely followed, gained his notoriety in particular by criticizing vaccines against Covid-19 and confinements during the pandemic, and defended the primacy of his faith over other religions, including 'Islam.
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A leader of Sydney's Muslim community said police may have "gone too fast" in labeling the attack as terrorism. “Why are we so quick to talk about terrorism when it comes to religion? “, he stressed. “I don’t think this improves the situation,” said Gamel Kheir, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association.
After the attack, a riot broke out outside the church, with hundreds of worshipers and community members expressing their anger. The teenager was being treated this Wednesday in a Sydney hospital and could remain there for several more days.