AFP’s Most Wanted Are Those Behind “Fabricated” Antisemitic “Terrorism Plot”

Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett last week listed a number of figures on her agency’s most wanted list, which include Sayit Akca, the man allegedly behind the January 2025 Dural caravan bomb hoax on Dharug land, as well as Kaz Hamad, who’s considered to have ordered two firebombings, which were all a part of the 2024-25 “summer of antisemitism”.

Comprising of fourteen main arson, graffiti and property damage crimes targeting Jewish-owned property and premises, the summer of antisemitism took place between October 2024 and February 2025. Thirteen malicious damage crimes transpired in Greater Sydney, while the fourteenth incident involved the 6 December 2024 firebombing of the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne.

Barrett’s having raised the figures of Akca and Hamad last week was made all the more topical as ASIO director general Mike Burgess had only just recently referred to Hamad, as the “former Australian resident living in Iraq” who “directed the attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne”, during his 2026 annual threat assessment speech on 24 June.

The attacks on Jewish properties across Greater Sydney began in October 2024. Early incidents had involved graffiti clearly criticising Israel in response to the Gaza genocide. But the messaging then shifted to target Jewish people. And the AFP and NSW police then announced on 10 March 2025 that their inquiries had found that local organised crime was orchestrating the incidents from overseas.

However, at an August 2025 presser, Burgess then announced that two of the 14 so-called antisemitic attacks had ultimately been organised by a figure within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which not only shattered the cohesive explanation that the AFP and NSW police inquiry had provided, but Barrett is now assigning blame to these same specific incidents to Hamad in Iraq.

“A criminal con job”

“There is one individual in particular, that we, that I remain focused on, and that is the individual who was responsible for the caravan that was located in Dural, during what is now referred to as the summer of antisemitism,” Barrett told the Murdoch press during the 9 July 2026 interview. And she too explained that this is Akca, who’d done it to gain an advantage and was last seen in Türkiye.

NSW premier Chris Minns and NSW police deputy commissioner Dave Hudson had initially been forced to address the caravan laden with explosives having been located on a property in Dural on 29 January 2025, after this fact was leaked to the press. The caravan also involved a note listing Jewish-owned properties. And Hudson explained that it was already being considered a potential hoax.

During their 10 March 2025 joint press conference, Barrett and Hudson outlined that it had been obvious from early on that the caravan containing explosives was a hoax. And the pair put all the so-called antisemitic arson and graffiti incidents of that summer down to organised crime setups, and the stated purpose for this was to provide police with tip-offs to be used to an advantage.

Last week’s Daily Telegraph interview with Barrett clarified that Akca fled Australia in 2023, after being charged with conspiring to import a commercial quantity of illicit drugs. The plot’s scenario involved Akca “tipping off” law enforcement about the potential mass casualty event the caravan comprised of, hoping to see the courts then go easy on him at sentencing over his drug offences.

This concluding federal and state police explanation was how the great antisemitic crimewave of 2024-25 was understood for the next five months. So, when the Albanese government and the nation’s chief spying agency came to the table with a different version of events relating to two of the incidents within the broader set of crimes, it tended towards more confusion.

The Iranian connection

Burgess and prime minister Anthony Albanese announced on 26 August last year that information had been obtained by the nation’s intelligence agencies that suggested that two of the fourteen incidents making up the “summer of antisemitism” were actually staged by Iranian state actors who were purposefully targeting Jewish interests in this country.

The Israeli press then suggested on the day following, that the revelations were due to spying agency Mossad having passed them on, and this information had specified the particular incidents being the 20 October 2024 firebombing of the Lewis Continental Kitchen on Gadigal land in Bondi, along with that of the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne on Boon Wurrung land.

“ASIO now assesses the Iranian government directed at least two and likely more attacks on Jewish interests in Australia,” the top spy told the press. “Our painstaking investigation uncovered and unpicked the links between the alleged crimes and the commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. The IRGC used a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement.”

Burgess did say, however, that “more attacks” by the IRGC were “likely”, yet there’s been no further revelations. Yet, there has been some anomalies arising around the cases put down to Iran, as those actors who firebombed Bondi’s Lewis Kitchen accidentally targeted the wrong property three nights prior, whilst the Addas bombing involved a car used in several other non-antisemitic crimes.

And despite these pieces of information being obtained by our nation’s top domestic spying agency, having flown in the face of the AFP and NSW police investigative outcomes, PM Albanese announced immediately that he’d be expelling the Iranian ambassador from Australia and his government further went on to designate the IRGC a state sponsor of terrorism in November 2025.

Multiplying perpetrators

But almost a year after Australia’s top minister and spy announced that the IRGC were behind two of 14 local antisemitic crimes, the revelations around the Sydney “fabricated terror plot” remains just as murky as ever, even after Mossad named IRGC commander Sardar Ammar as being behind the crimes last October.

Indeed, Burgess last month outlined that ASIO has “identified direct links between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp… and two individuals who were living offshore but maintained strong ties to Australia”, and he further added that these were the two individuals orchestrated “attacks on buildings associated with Jewish Australians, using a complex chain of proxies”.

The top spy also said that the “Iran-based Australian citizen” who orchestrated the attack on Lewis Continental Kitchen is a senior IRGC Qods Force agent, whilst it was a “former Australian resident living in Iraq” who “directed the attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne”.

Yet, the two crimes that Burgess is attributing to two distinct suspects appear to be the same two incidents that commissioner Barrett was last week blaming solely on Hamad.