this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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64
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/[email protected]
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

This is utterly disgusting and I hope the officers involved in this appalling abuse of power lose their positions.

It serves as yet another example of why the neurodiverse community should never trust law enforcement.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What the fuck. This is absolutely disgusting. And no mention of any repercussions for the police involved, either. Not that that's a surprise.

Chalk another one up to ACAB.

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

ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) is an acronym used as a political slogan associated with people who are opposed to the police. It is typically written as a catchphrase in graffiti, tattoos or other imagery in public spaces.

— Wikipedia

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Huh, I always thought it was All Cops Are Bad.

Either way, yeah, that’s my point. Cops do something absolutely abhorrent. Face no consequences. The lack of consequences proves it’s not just "a few bad apples", but a broken institution.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Fun fact, the full metaphor is "A few bad apples spoils the bunch" or a variant of (one bad apple spoils the barrel) etc. So even when they try to deflect with that, they're admitting it's all rotten.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

A bad apple releases gases which causes other apples to quickly ripen and then spoil.

So it's not just "there's one bad apple therefore the bunch is bad", the bad apple makes the other apples turn bad too. The saying is about an individual spreading corruption through a group.

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

Same with one's self up by their bootstraps, which was originally used to describe someone doing the impossible.

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

Same with pretty much every saying that regressives steal to justify their shit.

"Blood is thicker than water" does not mean family is more important than friends. The full saying is "Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." So it means the exact opposite.

"Spare the rod, spoil the child" is actually from a poem by Samuel Butler in the 1600s. The poem is about spanking your lover. The actual bible quote that the poem is satirizing is, "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him." Nuanced difference, but doesn't advocate beating the same way the shortened one does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb

Nah, this one is actually came much later. The earliest use of the phrase comes from the 13th century and reads "kin-blood is not spoiled by water", referring specifically to the water used to baptise. The idea being that one's outlook on life will still match that of one's parents, and not be drastically adjusted merely by being christened.

By the 17th century the phrase as we know it had formed, with blood referring to kin. Over the 18th and 19th centuries the meaning of "blood" expanded somewhat, to refer not just to familial relations but also members of one's clan or nation.

The phrase you used is first attested in the 1990s and 2000s. Its authors claimed it was the original form of the phrase, but without citations to back up the claim.

It's possible that these authors are conflating the English phrase—which goes back in English to the 13th century and which as a philosophy goes back to ancient Greece and Rome—with a similar notion in Arab culture. There, they have the notion that blood-brothers are in a closer covenant than milk-brothers. Milk-brothers referring to the mother's breast milk shared by biological brothers, and blood-brothers being those who have chosen to form a blood pact, apparently involving literally licking each other's blood.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

How are you going to justify all the repressive surveillance, if you don't manufacture some terrorists to catch?

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

Reminds me of when Riverside Sheriffs busted a special ed student (he had been diagnosed with Aspergers)....and then did it again to another one (who apparently had the cognitive level of a 3rd grader) the next year after having and undercover officer befriend them (along with others) and pressure them into buying or stealing drugs for them. Also, the case is crazy because somehow a minor regardless of having Aspergers can apparently waive their Maranda rights as well as their guardians not be contacted.

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

There's no such thing as Miranda rights in Australia - that's an American law. We do however have "the right to silence", and must be informed of that right by police on arrest so it has a similar effect.

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

I didn't say there were Miranda rights in Australia. I was referring the story I linked, which is from the US.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Ah, I see

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Surprised to see the article still using the term Asperger’s. Asperger was a nazi sympathiser and experimented on kids with autism and his name should be relegated to the toilet of history.

Edit: ah, the article is from 2014, so maybe a little less surprising that they used the term.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wtf were they thinking! `-´

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Another easily solved case for my record!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A reminder: never, ever, call police on someone whose welfare you care about.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

As the saying goes: if you have a problem and call the police, you now have two problems.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Thomas, an NDIS recipient with an IQ of 71, was first reported to police by Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and then by his parents because of his fixation with Islamic State, which included him accessing extremist material online and making threats to other students.

Fleming found the JCTT also deliberately delayed charging Thomas with offences until after he turned 14, as it made it harder for him to use the defence of doli incapax, which refers to the concept that a child is not criminally responsible for their actions.

“The search involved multiple Victoria Police members under the guise of attending to provide support to the family within the CVE [Countering Violent Extremism] framework.

A police officer who performed a report based on information downloaded from Thomas’s phone found that he appeared fascinated with China and symbols of the Chinese Communist party and that there were no religious images or verses from the Qur’an present.

But the operative gave evidence that Thomas was naive, and living a “fantasy life online”, including by asking questions like whether he could join the kids’ section of Islamic State.

Fleming said the prospect of diverting and rehabilitating Thomas was always destined to fail once the operative started communicating with him, and the magistrate could not accept evidence given by police that these efforts had primacy over the criminal investigation.

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