A man charged with torching a Melbourne synagogue in an antisemitic attack was remanded in custody when he appeared in court on Wednesday.
Younes Ali Younes, 20, last week became the second suspect to be charged for the December arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue which Australia accuses Iran of directing. Police allege three masked arsonists doused the building’s interior with a liquid accelerant before igniting it, causing extensive damage and injuring a worshipper.
Ali Younes, who is from Melbourne, appeared at the city magistrates’ court on Wednesday by video link from jail.
His first court appearance came a day after Anthony Albanese accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps of directing arson attacks on the synagogue and a Sydney kosher eatery, Lewis’s Continental Kitchen, two months earlier.
Iran denied Australia’s allegations on Tuesday through its foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei, who tried to connect the attacks to the challenges the government faced with Israel after announcing Australia would recognise a Palestinian state.
No links to Iran have been reported in the court proceedings so far but the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) says it has “credible evidence” that Iran orchestrated the Sydney and Melbourne attacks.
Ali Younes, who spoke only twice during the brief hearing, was remanded in custody and ordered to appear again in court on 4 December.
Ali Younes’ co-accused, Giovanni Laulu, a 21-year-old man also from Melbourne, will also appear in court on 4 December.
Laulu was arrested in July and remains behind bars. Both are charged with arson, reckless conduct endangering life and car theft. Arson carries a potential sentence of 15 years in prison. The other two charges are each punishable by 10 years in prison.
The crime was declared a terrorist act early in the investigation. Such a declaration increases resources available to the investigators.
No terrorism charges, which can carry longer prison sentences, have yet been laid.
Both suspects were charged by the Victorian joint counter terrorism team that brings together law enforcement officials from Victoria police, the Australian federal police and Asio.
Asio’s director-general, Mike Burgess, said on Tuesday that the Revolutionary Guard used a “complex web of proxies to hide its involvement” in the two antisemitic attacks in Australia.
Benjamin Klein, a board member of the damaged synagogue, said he had been warned by an official in the prime minister’s office that Iran would be blamed.
“It is quite shocking and traumatic to think that a peaceful, loving shule [synagogue] in Melbourne is targeted and attacked by terrorists from overseas,” Klein said.
Klein said state and federal authorities had been supportive with increased security at a temporary location where the synagogue’s congregation now gathers.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Australia’s peak Jewish group, said the owner of the targeted restaurant in Sydney was still processing news that the Revolutionary Guard had been accused of the arson.
“The fact that a business is targeted makes every Jewish Australian fearful that they could be next,” Ryvchin said.
Two Sydney men, Wayne Dean Ogden, 40, and Juon Amuoi, 26, have been charged with executing that attack and remain in custody.
Sayed Mohammed Moosawi, a 32-year-old Sydney-based former chapter president of the Nomads biker gang, has been charged with directing the arson attack. He has been released on bail.
The prime minister on Wednesday continued to refuse to make public the specifics of how Iran had allegedly directed the two crimes, citing ongoing investigations into other antisemitic attacks. Authorities said they also did not want to jeopardise the fair trials of suspects already charged by making public evidence that might not be admissible in court.
“It’s very clear from the advice that we received from Asio that both the [attacks on] Lewis’s Continental Kitchen in Sydney and the Adass Israel Synagogue there in Melbourne were arisen from Iran, from the Iran Revolutionary Guard. And that is them working in concert with criminal elements both overseas and here domestically,” Albanese told the ABC.