Australian police have arrested a 30-year-old Afghan man in Melbourne on suspicion of possessing extremist and violent videos. Authorities say videos showing shootings and the beheading of hostages were found on his mobile phone.<\/p>\n
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the man was arrested on Saturday, September 21, at Melbourne airport and is due to appear in court again on Tuesday, September 24. He also appeared via video link in Melbourne court on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Australian media have identified the man as Mohammad Ahmadi. According to the reports, he lives in Roxburgh Park, in Melbourne\u2019s northern suburbs.<\/p>\n
Australian police said the man was part of an online chat group with several other men, and members of the group shared extremist and violent content with one another. Police said the main charge against him, if proven, could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.<\/p>\n
He has also been charged with refusing to give police access to an electronic device. The court heard that Mohammad Ahmadi had planned to travel to Afghanistan via Abu Dhabi to visit his sick father, but was arrested after being questioned at Melbourne airport.<\/p>\n
According to reports, the case is linked to an Australian Federal Police raid on a house in Melbourne in May, during which several electronic devices were seized. A representative of the Australian Federal Police\u2019s National Security Investigation Office told the court that Mohammad Ahmadi was not the initial main target of the operation, but forensic experts found material on the seized phone that they believe falls into the category of violent extremist content.<\/p>\n
According to reports, Mohammad Ahmadi intends to apply for bail, but police have expressed concern that he may leave Australia and fail to appear in court again. The Australian Federal Police is responsible for investigating federal crimes in the country, including cases related to national security, terrorism and organised crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australian police arrest a 30-year-old Afghan man in Melbourne over alleged extremist videos and violent content on his phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-security-incidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}