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A caravan laden with enough explosives to create a 40-metre blast wave could have been a “mass casualty event”, police say, which also contained notes suggesting Jewish Australians and a synagogue were the intended target.

The caravan was found on 19 January dumped on the side of a road in Dural, a semirural suburb about 40km northwest of Sydney, but police did not reveal the find until it leaked to media last Wednesday afternoon.

On Wednesday evening, New South Wales Police defended staying silent on the “very serious threat” for more than a week, saying investigations required “anonymity”, while NSW Premier Chris Minns labelled the incident as “terrorism”.

“This is certainly an escalation of recent attacks and had the potential to cause a great deal of damage,” Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson said.

Terrorism

A resident had towed the abandoned caravan away from Derriwong Rd, Dural, believing it a hazard to passing cars, before making the discovery, with an address to a Sydney synagogue found on the note, which also included “f..k the Jews”.

The caravan was found to contain Powergel explosives, usually used on mine sites, with enough force to create a blast zone with a 40-metre diameter.

Deputy Commissioner Hudson reiterated that there was “no ongoing threat” and that lines of inquiry were being pursued, including those of a handful of people already in custody and charged under the force’s anti-Semitic taskforce, Pearl. He urged anyone who saw the vehicle between 7 December and 19 January to contact police.

“We have made arrests on the periphery of this investigation… and this matter has escalated outside of NSW Police’s Strike Force Pearl because of its severity, to the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT),” he said.

Police attended a property last week in Dural as part of investigations. The discovery came two days after the former home of Jewish leader Alex Ryvchin was vandalised in Dover Heights and a day before a Maroubra childcare centre was firebombed and tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the “full might” of Australia’s law enforcement agencies was being utilised, led by the JCTT.

“NSW Police have people in custody and continue working with other agencies, including those involved in Australian Federal Police Special Operation Avalite to investigate threats, violence and hatred towards the Australian Jewish community, and take action and hold people to account for crimes,” he said.

Classification

Defending both not announcing the investigation at the time – the premier was briefed a day after the discovery – and its rollout late on Wednesday, Deputy Commissioner Hudson conceded that it had “compromised” inquiries.

“There are ongoing investigations, ideally those should be conducted with a form of anonymity… We are still after offenders that we believe may be involved,” he said. “We believe there is some connection between some of the targets charged under Strike Force Pearl… We believe arrests have been made in the periphery of this job, under that taskforce.”

So far, ten people have been charged under that taskforce, mainly related to anti-Semitic vandalism attacks at synagogues or prominent Jewish suburbs.

Deputy Commissioner Hudson said investigators were pursuing whether the dumped van was ever intended to make its final targets, or whether it was abandoned to be discovered by police. He ruled out designating it a terror incident at this stage and said no clear ideology had become apparent, and that “peripheral” actors were already in police custody after separate, earlier charges.

“The amount of explosives was not used in the normal anti-Semitic attacks that we have seen occur in Sydney,” the deputy commissioner said, confirming no other similar incidents were being investigated currently by police.

Mr Minns said that while it would be on the call of police, he said there was only “one way” of describing the incident: “terrorism”.

“That’s what we’re very worried about… It would strike terror in the community, particularly the Jewish, and it must be met with the full force of the police and government,” he said.

The premier defended that neither he nor the police revealed the caravan’s discovery last week, saying that it was with “great regret” that he couldn’t reassure the Jewish community any next attack wouldn’t be fatal.

“There are bad actors in our community: bad motivations, ideologies, morals, ethics – bad people,” he said. “They’re intent on doing damage to others purely on the basis of religion. It’s hateful and we need to stamp it out.”

Mr Minns promised a “massive and growing” police response, noting how Strike Force Pearl had already doubled in operational size and would enlarge further. “To the Jewish community – the vast majority of people in NSW find this behaviour abhorrent, appalling, and against the values we share, and we will defeat them,” he said.

Danger Zone

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) co-chief executive, Peter Wertheim, said the community was “most concerned”.

“The ECAJ has been in contact with the Australian Federal Police, and we have been assured there is no ongoing threat to the Jewish or wider community,” he said. “We have also been assured that the matter is being thoroughly investigated by the police to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, who was involved and what their motives were.”

Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive officer Alon Cassuto said the discovery constitutes the “most severe threat” to the Jewish community in “living memory”.

“We have been warning for 16 months that unchecked incitement, violent rhetoric, and weak leadership has created the perfect environment for extremism and terrorism to flourish,” he said.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said it could have resulted in the “gravest possible consequences”.

“We have been saying for weeks now that the Jewish community is the target of an ongoing campaign of domestic terrorism… This is now beyond dispute,” he said.

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Republished with thanks to the Australian Prayer Network. Image courtesy of Adobe.