‘Vulnerable cohort’: What is it about teenagers and terrorism – and what is being done?

In an ideal world, the words “teenagers” and “terrorism” would never appear in the same sentence, nor be uttered in the same breath.

But that is no longer the world we live in. This week, six more youths were charged with Commonwealth terrorism offences, following the initial horrific knife attack by a 16-year-old on Assyrian Christian Bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel, during a live-streamed sermon on April 15 (an attack that is likely to cost the controversial cleric his eye).

The six, ranging in age from 14 to 17, appeared via videolink before the Parramatta Children’s Court this week, two on lesser charges of possessing extremist material, and the other four on more serious charges of planning or preparing for a terrorist attack.

Parents and defence counsel desperately sought to make the case for bail, given their ages, with the parents of one boy (who’d expressed hatred for “kuffar” or non-believers) willing to mortgage the family home to raise the $1.5 million surety required.

But magistrates expressed shock at the graphic nature of the group’s encrypted exchanges, which included an expressed wish to kill Jews and Assyrians (a Christian minority group). For the four facing the most serious charges, bail was denied outright.

How far the youths’ plans may have progressed – if, indeed, planning had gone beyond hyped-up boasting – hasn’t been revealed.

Nor is the link yet clear between the six charged this week and the church attacker, though one described him as a “mate”. The others, police say, were identified as they began investigating “associates” of the knife-wielding 16-year-old.

The most striking feature of the group remains their youth and yet, this would have come as no surprise to law enforcement and intelligence authorities.

In an address to the National Press Club last week, ASIO chief Mike Burgess noted that “in terms of minors, we’ve been talking about this for a long time”. They had comprised half of ASIO’s “priority counter-terrorism caseload” just a couple of years ago, and “it’s picked up again”, he said. “They are a vulnerable cohort.”

He singled out social media as one driver, though not the only one. Speaking at the same event, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw cited evidence of Syrian-based radicals endeavouring to “groom” a “child” in Australia via an online gaming platform.

In a report released on Thursday responding to the raids, the influential Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said that “young Muslims growing up in a post-9/11 world find themselves having to navigate ... complex identities and prejudices from a very young age”. This led to “constant pressure to prove their loyalty to Australia”, which “coupled with the internal conflict between their Australian and Muslim identities can lead to significant psychological stress and isolation”.

The phenomenon of radicalised teens is not unique to Australia. In Germany  last month, a boy and two girls, aged 15 to 16, were arrested on suspicion of planning an Islamic State terrorist attack using knives and Molotov cocktails.

Burgess has also spoken about society needing to “stare into this problem earlier”, to catch kids early and understand how to “quickly help them and be deradicalised”.

But Muslim community leaders say that message looks hollow against the way in which last week’s highly publicised raids were conducted.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils report slammed the raids’ “excessive force ... [which] not only directly impacted the individuals involved but … resonated negatively across the broader community”.

The federation says the failure of authorities to consider alternatives to a “security-only” approach risks creating “a cyclical problem where heavy-handed security measures feed the very radicalisation they aim to prevent”.

It is now calling for an overhaul of the country’s national security regime, including the removal of “religious cause” from the definition of terrorism, adoption of a more nuanced approach where minors are identified as a terrorism risk, and redoubled resourcing for community engagement, early prevention and mental health.

Federation chief executive Kamalle Dabboussy says: “The policing response should be the last resort, but it appears to be the first resort at the moment.”

Clarke Jones, a criminologist at the Australian National University with experience in countering violent extremism, says relations between authorities and Islamic communities in Sydney and Melbourne are “probably at the lowest ebb I have ever seen”.

“There are lots of other things happening that are causing divisions between Muslim communities and the government and police,” Jones warns.

These include anguish over the mounting death toll in Gaza, following the Hamas terror attacks of October 7 that precipitated a massive Israeli bombardment; the failure of the Australian government to bring home the remaining women and children trapped in camps in north-east Syria following the collapse of IS; and two public references Burgess has recently made to the risks of Sunni violent extremism. (In fairness to Burgess, he did so while also highlighting the growing risks of right-wing extremists seeking to fan race warfare here, and noting a recent Christian religious fundamentalist terror attack.)

The speed with which police designated the church stabbing a terrorist incident, just hours after it occurred, remains another source of grievance.

Jamal Rifi, a former GP with deep links in western Sydney’s Arabic-speaking community, has been in extensive contact with the family of the church attacker, and says there should have been an early mental health assessment before he was labelled a terrorist.

“I was shocked to find out that there is a life-long history of behaviour that indicates a mental health issue, that unfortunately has gone untreated,” Rifi says. “This boy is still a minor, he hasn’t been treated, and now he is getting a potential life sentence.”

Rifi is struck by the contrast with the Wieambilla siege in Queensland in December 2022, when Christian fundamentalists gunned down three people, including two police. It took two months, not a few hours, for police to decide that was a terror attack, he says.

More broadly, Rifi says authorities have dropped the ball on the long-haul task of maintaining strong connections with Islamic communities and investing in engagement and prevention.

“You build your friendship at the time of peace so you can count on it in the time of crisis. And what happened in the time of peace? The director-general of ASIO twice pointed the finger and says the risk to Australia stems from Sunni Muslims. To be honest, all my life we have worked to improve relations with the NSW police in particular and the Australian Federal Police. Unfortunately, I feel that relationship has weakened recently.”

Earlier this week, Rifi met with AFP chief Kershaw in Sydney, one of a series of meetings with Islamic community representatives that appear to have been hastily arranged after last week’s raids. Of the meeting, Rifi says: “We agreed this is a crucial time – we need to improve the relationship.”

Jones urges authorities to expand their range of contacts within the Islamic community, and says “nothing can happen without trust and mutual respect”. He is critical of the fact that “we have thrown [millions of dollars] into countering violent extremism. But how much has gone into helping around mental health, and supporting and preventing kids from stupid behaviour? The system has failed”.

The NSW government advertises a service called Step Together, which provides a hotline for families seeking help if they’re concerned about “someone they know heading down the wrong path”.

But Rifi says he never knew much about it, while Dabboussy says he’s never heard of it at all. Many in government seem unaware of it as well. When this masthead inquired about it this week, it took three days and passage through the offices of three ministers before an answer came back.

A state government spokesperson said Step Together received annual funding of $625,000 but was unable to estimate how many people had accessed it because of the “variety of pathways” through which it provided “information and advice”. All up, the spokesperson added, the state government was investing $12.3 million annually in countering violent extremism programs.

Peta Lowe, who was the countering violent extremism director for juvenile justice in NSW in 2018 and now practises privately in the field, says Step Together has fallen into a “degree of disuse … it was never really clear about its purpose [and] not very trusted by the community”.

“My question is what have we done to ensure we are doing as much as can for vulnerable young people [through] diversion rather than relying on arresting? … Very unfortunately in this country, we lack enough non-government organisations running these sorts of specific programs, the expertise hasn’t been developed [because of the emphasis on “securitisation”] … and the ones run by government are just not appealing to community members … for all the reasons highlighted in the Thomas Carrick case”.

The Carrick case (the name is a pseudonym) has become notorious among Australia’s Islamic communities, especially, in Melbourne.

It involved a 13- year-old autistic Melbourne boy, from an Islamic family, whose parents contacted police after he became fixated on IS (following an earlier fixation on Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Communist Party).

They wanted the police to put him back on the straight and narrow. Instead, an undercover officer working as part of a joint AFP and Victoria Police taskforce engaged the boy through online exchanges that led to charges being laid against him.

A magistrate later placed a permanent stay on the charges, slamming the conduct of the police operation.

The case has horrified the Islamic Council of Victoria, whose president, Adel Salman, told this masthead: “They abused the trust of the parents in the most egregious fundamental way ... They basically radicalised the boy, and rather than de-escalate, encouraged him to contemplate and plan terrorist actions. It was disgraceful.”

The AFP says it has the matter under investigation. A spokesperson said the force’s work in prevention alongside “state, territory, Commonwealth, government, industry, private sector and international partners” included work with “community members” to “better support the AFP in our management of neurodivergent youth who are at risk of, or engaging in, terrorism-related violence”.

That message isn’t resonating much in the current environment. Meanwhile, a NSW Police spokesperson insisted the force had “strong relationships with the many diverse communities across NSW … built on many years of continued engagement and collaboration”.

Clarke Jones and Peta Lowe endorse the view of those Islamic leaders who argue that references to religion should be dropped from the legislative definition of terrorism, which would presumably leave in place ideological and political motivation. Lowe says: “It doesn’t matter what the belief structure is ... It’s whether or not [adherents] support and advocate for violence as a way of bringing about their intended outcome.”

But Rodger Shanahan, a long-time Middle East security analyst, is sceptical “You could have some blancmange definition of terrorism, but it would be unacceptable to Australian society more broadly”, he said. “If there is a terrorist threat, people need to understand what has motivated it; it is the first question the public will ask … [when it’s] radical Islamist ideology, they will say, well, why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

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