this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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How Australian undercover police ‘fed’ an autistic 13-year-old’s fixation with Islamic State (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/australia
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Counter-terrorism police encouraged an autistic 13-year-old boy in his fixation on Islamic State in an undercover operation after his parents sought help from the authorities.

The boy, given the pseudonym Thomas Carrick, was later charged with terror offences after an undercover officer “fed his fixation” and “doomed” the rehabilitation efforts Thomas and his parents had engaged in, a Victorian children’s court magistrate found.

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[–] zik 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Even worse I can think of two other cases of the Federal Police and ASIO doing similar things:

  • Scott Rush, one of the "Bali 9", was imprisoned in Indonesia after a tip-off from the AFP. This followed his parents alerting the AFP in advance and them reassuring the parents that they'd keep him out of trouble - then waiting until the crime had been committed and tipping off the Indonesian police to take the credit.
  • Jean-Philippe Wispelaere was a defence intelligence officer with mental illness who was caught selling secrets to Singapore. The "secrets" turned out to be publically available maps - not secret at all - and he hadn't committed any crimes until the sting operation organised by an Australian government organisation and the FBI. He was arrested by the FBI and remains in prison today.

I guess for police it looks good on your resume to have caught a bad guy, and it's easier to track if you're making it all happen in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The wiki article for the second one paints a very different story.

In January the following year, Wispelaere quit his job and travelled to Bangkok, where he approached the embassy of a foreign country, offering to sell classified material to that country. (The country is reported by some sources to be Singapore). The country notified the United States, and the FBI began to investigate. Posing as agents for a foreign country (allegedly Russia), the FBI met Wispelaere in Bangkok, where he gave them hundreds of sensitive documents in exchange for cash. Later, he mailed more documents to an address in Virginia, also run by the FBI.

Do you have any source of information for your version of events? Would be curious to read more and update the wiki if need be.

[–] zik 1 points 9 months ago

Here's one on his lack of mental compentence to testify at his own trial.

Apparently Singapore contacted our intelligence service and ASIO organised the sting with the FBI. Prior to that he had no buyer. That's consistent with the Wikipedia article.

I can't find a reference now for the documents not actually being classified - I remember this from media coverage at the time. I think the story was that they were USGS maps which were subsequently publically available or something like that.