An 18-year-old Dunedin man has been arrested in connection with an online bomb threat targeting a Wellington mosque earlier this week.<\/p>\n
Detective Sergeant Dean Pearce said the man was arrested last night and has now been charged with causing harm by posting digital communication.<\/p>\n
He was scheduled to appear in Dunedin District Court on October 27.<\/p>\n
“Enquiries into this matter are continuing and police cannot rule out further charges,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) said the threat included the exact address of the Wellington Islamic Centre (Kilbirnie Masjid).<\/p>\n
“As a necessary precaution, all community activities have been stopped at Kilbirnie Masjid. All the other mosques and Islamic centres in Wellington have been advised of the threat.”<\/p>\n
FIANZ thanked police for their swift response, saying the arrest had brought “this sad saga to a close”.<\/p>\n
Acting Wellington district commander Inspector Ren\u00e9e Perkins yesterday said police had received a report of a threat towards a place of worship in Wellington on Thursday.<\/p>\n
She said there had been “no immediate known threat” but that an investigation was underway.<\/p>\n
“Police are speaking with community representatives and keeping them updated while the investigation continues.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An 18-year-old Dunedin man has been arrested in connection with an online bomb threat targeting a Wellington mosque…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,1080,111,43,139,69,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-101251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-crime-and-justice","9":"tag-dunedin-otago","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}