Iraqi officials have arrested a man wanted by Australian Federal Police as a person of interest in the investigation into a spate of Molotov cocktailings, including an antisemitic attack on a Melbourne synagogue, police said on Wednesday.
The December 2024 arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne gutted much of the building.
Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador in August after the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation traced the funding of the individuals who set fire to the synagogue — as well as the suspects in a Sydney arson attack targeting the Jewish community — to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the arrested man, Kazem Hamad, was a threat to national security and that she had identified him as her "number one priority."
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said in a statement that Kadhim Malik Hamad Rabah al-Hajami had been arrested as part of a drug investigation, after a request from Australia.
Barrett said Iraqi officials had made an independent decision to arrest the man in their own criminal investigation, after Australian Federal Police provided information to Iraqi law enforcement late last year.
"This arrest is a significant disruption to an alleged serious criminal and his alleged criminal enterprise in Australia," she said in a statement.
In October, Barrett said that in addition to being a suspect in arson attacks in Australia linked to the tobacco trade, the man was "a person of interest in the investigation into the alleged politically-motivated arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue" in Melbourne.
Hamad, previously convicted in Australia for drug trafficking offenses, was deported from Australia to Iraq in 2023.
Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
has a history of targeting Jews and Israelis abroad, especially in South America and Europe.
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