Police have charged a man with sending offensive text messages inciting violence linked to Syd-ney's recent race riots, detectives said yesterday.
The 33-year-old man -- the first to be charged under federal law for sending messages linked to the unrest via cellphone -- faces a maximum three-year sentence if convicted.
Police said they expect to arrest more people who wrote or forwarded such messages in the coming days.
Police said in a statement that the suspect forwarded two messages to several people calling for them to meet at two south-ern Sydney beaches last Sunday -- a week after thousands of white Australians rioted there, attacking men of Middle Eastern appearance.
The statement did not include the exact wording of the messages, and did not identify the suspect.
The suspect was scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 1.
Police say a blizzard of cellphone text messages was sent in the days before the Dec. 11 riot, urging people to mass at Sydney's Cronulla beach to protest the beating a week earlier of two volunteer life savers. The protest erupted into a race riot and sparked two nights of retaliatory attacks by youths of Middle Eastern appearance, also spurred by text messages.
In the days after the violence, more messages circulated in Sydney and other Australian cities urging violence on Dec. 18.
Police Commander Dennis Bray told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio that detectives and phone companies were trying to trace the texts.
"We've been working in the last week in gathering and anal-yzing information we've obtained from the carriers and this fellow was identified as one fellow that had been sending messages and we've acted," he said.
"There will be more," he said.
David Bernie, vice president of the New South Wales state Council for Civil Liberties, said his group is worried at new police powers to confiscate phones.
"We are concerned about the move towards simply police being able to seize people's phones and check their messages without a warrant or some other basis for doing it," he said.
"Any interception of communications should really be done by a search warrant," Bernie said.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS