Parliament Resumes As New Liberal Ministry Is Sworn In (Photo : Getty Images)
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin said on Wednesday that the youngest Islamic terror suspect in the country is a 12-year-old boy. He expressed shock that suspects on police radar are becoming younger.
Australia is holding a national conference of federal and state law enforcement officials on Thursday in Canberra. New Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull convened the summit in a bid to counter violent extremism.
The boy is the youngest of 18 suspected extremist listed in a court document in March, reports ABC. In early October, 15-year-old Farhad Jabar shoot to death Curtis Cheng, an accountant. The incident took place just outside a Sydney police building and triggered the holding of the conference.
According to the court document, another terrorism suspect, Ahmed Saiyer Naizmand, is banned from communicating with the 18 people on the list. In December, he pleaded guilty to stealing the passport of his brother which Naizmand used to fly to the Middle East to join the Islamic State. However, he was stopped in Dubai and deported to Australia where Naizmand is detained.
Justice Minister Michael Keenan finds the situation of a "barbaric terrorist organization in the Middle East" using social media to reach young Australians as terrible. "We have this trend of them reaching out to people in their 20s, then their late teens. Now we find people in their early teens and the government is very shocked about these matters," The Guardian quotes Keenan.
In 2014, a Middle Eastern man took hostages in a café that became known as the "Sydney Siege" which resulted in the death of many hostages and the gunman.
