AFP Stands By Decision To Target And 'Entice' Autistic 13-Year-Old

The AFP has said it would repeat its undercover operation on an autistic child that fed him radicalisation before he was charged with terror offences.

In 2021, the parents of a 13-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder approached Victoria police asking for help because of his fixation with Islamic state videos.

The boy, referred to as Thomas in Children’s Court proceedings, was an NDIS recipient with an IQ of 71.

A month after, as Victoria police began efforts to counter his extremism, Thomas became the subject of an operation by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT), which comprises Australian federal police, Victoria police and ASIO members ,to find him online and gather evidence and information to charge him with terrorism offences.

The JCTT were given access to Thomas’s home, phone, and information about his school and psychologist through his parents.

The JCTT engaged undercover agents to target Thomas online, one posing as a 24-year-old Muslim man from NSW who spoke with him during breaks at school and at night, for 55 of 71 days.

There were 1400 pages of online chats between the two. This agent introduced Thomas to another agent, posing as a more extreme person overseas, to whom Thomas eventually sent a photo wearing a face mask, in his school uniform, holding a knife with “ISIS” scrawled on it in marker.

His house was searched within days and he was charged less than two months after. A Victorian children’s court granted permanent stay of the case, and Magistrate Lesley Fleming made damning findings against police.

In the decision, Fleming found law enforcement used “the guise of a rehabilitation service to entice the parents of a troubled child to engage in a process that resulted in potential harm to the child.”

“The community would not expect law enforcement officers to encourage a 13-14 year old child towards racial hatred, distrust of police and violent extremism, encouraging the child’s fixation on ISIS,” Fleming said.

Fleming also found police had purposefully delayed charging Thomas until he turned 14, which would make it more difficult to use the doli incapax defence, which states children under a certain age cannot be held criminal responsible for their actions.

The AFP officer responsible for signing off on the operation, Deputy Commissioner McCartney, told Senate estimates he would do it again.

McCartney defended the operation on the grounds that the de-escalation techniques employed by Victoria Police’s Countering Violent Extremism team weren’t “being effective”.

“He had [a] long-standing fixation on ISIS. He had expressed a desire to carry out a violent act. He expressed the desire to carry out a school shooting. He was researching material on how to build a bomb, he was engaging with like-minded individuals,” the deputy commissioner said.

“I think from our view, and again, we go to the damage control operation — if the same set of circumstances, I would sign that again.”

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