CRIME
FBI Arrests Arizona Man For Allegedly Inciting Religious Terror Attack In Australia Last Year
Queensland Police Service
The FBI arrested an American in Arizona for allegedly inciting a terrorist attack in Australia last year that left three people dead, including two Australian police officers, officials said Wednesday.
The 58-year-old suspect, who was not named, allegedly sent Christian extremist messages to two of the three attackers in Australia, inciting a religiously motivated terrorist attack, officials said at a press conference in Australia Wednesday. He was arrested by FBI agents in Heber Overgaard, Ariz., on Dec. 1.
The attack took place on Dec. 12 last year, in the rural village of Wieambilla, on Australia’s east coast, northwest of Brisbane. Queensland police officers arrived at a property to investigate a report of a missing person, and were ambushed.
Relatives Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train engaged in an hourslong shootout with police, killing Constable Matthew Arnold, 26, Constable Rachel McCrow, 29, and a 58-year-old neighbor before they were all shot dead.
“We know that the offenders executed a religiously motivated terrorist attack in Queensland. They were motivated by a Christian extremist ideology and subscribed to the broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism,” Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon said at a news conference Wednesday, alongside the FBIs legal attaché in Australia, Nitiana Mann.
Premillenialism is the belief that Jesus Christ will physically return to Earth after a period of Great Tribulation and rule for 1,000 years of peace.
The American suspect allegedly repeatedly sent messages to Gareth and Stacey Train about Christian end-of-days ideology between May 2021 and December 2022.
A grand jury in Arizona indicted the suspect on charges of interstate threats. He is charged in the U.S. and authorities did not say there was any plan to extradite him to Australia. Queensland police personnel traveled to the U.S. to assists in the investigation.
The FBI is still investigating the suspect’s motives.
The FBI has a long memory and an even longer reach. From Queensland, Australia, to the remote corners of Arizona,” Mann said. The FBI and QPS worked jointly and endlessly to bring this man to justice, and he will face the crimes he is alleged to have perpetrated.
TMX contributed to this article.
