Could ‘criminals for hire’ be behind some antisemitic attacks in Australia? Here’s what we know​on January 22, 2025 at 2:00 pm

Why is the possibility of hired criminals being investigated?

A wave of antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne has become a major law and order issue, as well as a political emergency, for the Albanese government as the federal election nears.

Synagogues and neighbourhoods with Jewish populations have been targeted by arson and graffiti, with cars set alight and buildings vandalised. Last year a Melbourne synagogue was hit by an arson attack, and this week a Sydney childcare centre was targeted in an antisemitic attack.

In an unexpected development on Tuesday night, after a snap national cabinet meeting was called, the Australian federal police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, said “all lines of inquiry” were open, including “whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia”.

“We are looking into whether any young people are involved in carrying out some of these crimes, and if they have been radicalised online and encouraged to commit antisemitic acts.”

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In further comments on Wednesday, Kershaw emphasised that investigators were analysing whether “some” of the attacks fitted this category.

“These investigative lines of inquiry are looking at whether some individuals have been paid to carry out some antisemitic acts in Australia. We believe criminals for hire may be behind some incidents,” he said.

If true, who could be paying them?

Neither statement from Kershaw assigned specific blame or responsibility to any particular group, nor did they give any suspected motive for such acts.

The commissioner said a key line of inquiry was: “Who is paying those criminals, where those people are, whether they are in Australia or offshore, and what their motivation is.

“There is still a lot of investigative work to be done and we are not ready to rule anything in or out.”

Could terror groups or foreign governments be involved?

Kershaw’s statement on Tuesday said investigators were probing whether young people had potentially been “radicalised online and encouraged to commit antisemitic acts”.

The Coalition opposition has separately raised concerns about whether organised terror groups or foreign governments were involved, but neither option has been specifically raised by police.

“I’m deeply concerned about these revelations because they have been put out there in public with very little substantiation … whether it’s a foreign government or a transnational terrorist organisation,” the shadow home affairs minister, James Paterson, said on Channel Seven on Wednesday.

“I’ve already had questions from the Jewish community this morning asking me whether it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran who’s responsible for this. And the danger with putting out partial information like this is it leads to speculation and alarm like that.”

Neither of Kershaw’s statements specifically mentioned the possible involvement of a terrorist group.

Guardian Australia understands it is not believed at this stage that terrorist groups are linked to the spate of attacks.

Prof Greg Barton, a counter-terrorism expert at Deakin University, says neither terrorist groups nor organised crime gangs are likely to be the foreign actors potentially behind the attacks.

What is Anthony Albanese’s response?

The federal opposition was quick to demand answers from the government on Wednesday, including what the prime minister knew about the potential involvement to foreign actors, and when.

Albanese refused to disclose details about the AFP investigation or speculate about who was behind the attacks, suggesting that could hinder the police inquiry.

“I’ll leave that to the AFP,” he said.

“I am not going to compromise the investigations. We want to hunt down these perpetrators. We want to see them face the full force of the law.”

What is a criminal for hire?

The practice of third parties hiring individuals to commit a crime, thus hiding their own involvement, is not new.

Speaking generally, the operations are becoming more sophisticated and harder for authorities to crack, with criminals using encrypted messaging services to evade police detection.

Whether encrypted messaging services were used in the recent antisemitic attacks forms part of the AFP’s investigation.

The federal police has been involved in two recent major operations involving encrypted services, including Operation Ironside, in which a purpose-built app covertly run by the FBI was used to ensnare unsuspecting criminals.

How long have authorities been investigating foreign actors linked to antisemitism in Australia?

The government and police authorities have been reticent to reveal more of their investigative processes.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said he would not discuss what he had been briefed on, but chided Paterson’s requests for more information as “naive”.

“The Australian federal police will have very deliberate reasons for what they put out in the public and when they do it … They should put out the information that they think helps with the investigation,” he said.

But when asked at a news conference “how long have you known about the potential of these foreign actors?”, Albanese would only say: “I announced Operation Avalite some time ago.”

Avalite was publicly announced last December, which means this line of inquiry could have been under investigation for more than a month.