Key Points
- Police are investigating after a caravan was found with explosives and a note that included the words "f--- the Jews".
- NSW Premier Chris Minns said the thwarted potential attack was an escalation in "race-fuelled hatred".
- The caravan was discovered on 19 January, with authorities defending the delay in announcing the discovery.
Public revelations about an explosive-laden caravan have compromised the investigation, NSW Police commissioner Karen Webb says, as she and Premier Chris Minns defended the "covert" operation.
The caravan was found north-west of Sydney in Dural on 19 January, and inside was enough power gel explosive — typically used on mining sites — to create a 40 metre-wide blast, authorities said.
There was also a note that contained addresses of Jewish people and a synagogue, and included the words, "f--- the Jews".
After being reported to authorities, it sparked a massive multi-agency investigation with more than 100 counter-terrorism investigators. But the public was not made aware of it until Wednesday after the incident was leaked to a Sydney newspaper.
Webb told reporters on Thursday it was a "covert" inquiry that required police "to go about our business without compromising an investigation".
"The fact this information is now in the public domain has compromised our investigation and has been detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used," she said.
Minns backed Webb, saying police had not "been twiddling their thumbs".
"The public shouldn't believe — and I don't think it's appropriate — for the police to say or the government to say when a counter-terrorism inquiry begins we're going to issue a media release and have it done in the public domain," he said.
Federal Opposition MP Julian Leeser — whose electorate includes Dural — said authorities should tell the public about such investigations "at the earliest possible occasion".
"I echo the comments of my leader, Peter Dutton," Leeser told ABC News. "We also want to know when the prime minister and senior ministers at the federal level knew about this and what they have done in this space."
The federal Opposition's assistant foreign affairs spokesperson Julian Leeser, whose electorate includes Dural, with a local resident on Thursday, near the area where the caravan was found. Source: AAP / Bianca De Marchi
No detonator was found inside the van.
Police have said there is no ongoing threat to the community, and the owner of the caravan was already in custody on unrelated charges that were laid by a strike force set up to find those r.
'Clearly designed to harm people'
The incident has sparked concern among Jewish groups with the Zionist Federation of Australia labelling it "the most severe threat to the Jewish community in Australia to date", and "another manifestation" of violence targeted at Australia's Jewish community.
Minns said it was "undeniably an escalation in race-fulled hatred".
"We're very concerned about it," he said.
He labelled the incident "terrorism" on Wednesday, although when speaking to reporters on Thursday, he said it was a "potential terrorist event".
Asked on ABC Radio on Thursday morning whether he agreed with Minns' earlier description, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: "I certainly do".
"It's clearly designed to harm people, but it's also designed to create fear in the community. And that is the very definition."
Israel's ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, said he was deeply alarmed over the foiled potential attack, although he added he had been assured that every measure was being taken to protect the community.
Neighbour speaks
Robert, the owner of a property near where the caravan had been parked, categorically denied that either he or his tenants — two elderly women — had anything to do with the potential terror plot.
The women had lived at the house for 20 and five years, respectively, he said.
"[The caravan] was never, ever on the property, it was up the road," said Robert, who declined to give his last name.
"The implication [is] that explosives, detonators were kept on the property.
"They weren't, they were in the caravan that has no relation to us."
Robert, the landlord of a nearby property, said he had driven past the caravan and thought nothing of it. Source: AAP / Bianca De Marchi
Grady, another local resident who did not want to give his full name, said he saw scores of police on the neighbouring property on 21 January, but he didn't think about it again until he saw news on Wednesday night of the explosives being discovered.
He had no recollection of seeing the caravan, adding that people parked all kinds of vehicles on the road quite regularly.
String of antisemitic attacks in Sydney
Meanwhile, Mount Sinai College at Maroubra was hit by vandals overnight .
That incident comes after a spate of antisemitic attacks in Sydney, with a and sprayed with antisemitic graffiti on 21 January.
Four days before, a house that formerly belonged to Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin was .
Two men have been charged over a after it was spray-painted with red Nazi hakenkeruz symbols and briefly set alight in the early hours of 11 January.
Australian Federal Police have identified foreign actors recruiting local "criminals for hire" could be behind some of the attacks targeting Jewish communities.
Cars have been set alight, a synagogue burnt down and antisemitic slurs painted on buildings and cars in attacks that have escalated in frequency and severity since December.
With the Australian Associated Press.
