NSW Police Ram Cars, Abuse and Arrest Innocent Men for ‘Driving Whilst Muslim’

New South Wales police tactical operations officers rammed two cars carrying seven men on Dharug land at the intersection of George and Campbell streets in the Sydney southwestern suburb of Liverpool at around 4 pm on Thursday 18 December 2025. And on releasing all the men on the following day without charges, it would appear police had been trying to prevent another Bondi mass murder.

Following the interception of the cars, the occupants, who have been labelled the “Liverpool Seven”, despite being found completely innocent of any intention to commit any wrongdoing, there are photos depicting officers from the Tactical Operations Unit with the Muslim men aged between 19 and 24, lying face down on the ground and kneeling with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

“All seven males are known to Victoria police and travelled from Victoria,” said NSW police commissioner Mal Lanyon, during a 19 December press conference, just prior to the release of the men. “Whilst the specific threat posed by the males is unknown, I can say that the potential for a violent act to have been committed was such that we were not prepared to tolerate the risk.”

The top cop further explained that Bondi was one of the locations police suspected that the Victorian men may have been on their way to, when his officers rammed them off the road. However, it was found that the “justification for their ongoing detainment no longer” existed, after a review of the evidence on Friday, and the men were then released.

So, what appears to have occurred is that a frazzled NSW Police Force, reeling under the strain following the 14 December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre and having been tipped off about some Muslim men travelling to Sydney for a holiday, was seen to act with overreach due to heightened fears in the wake of the mass shooting.

Alleviating mass shooting fallout

“We will have to release the men if we don’t have relevant evidence,” said a tired looking police commissioner, who seemed slightly apologetic that these men would be released into the community, even though they’d done nothing wrong. Lanyon too stressed that he’d met with members of the Muslim community, and “they are deeply offended” by the “abhorrent act” in Bondi.

“Islamic extremist ideology is something that we are looking at between them,” Lanyon added in response to a question about the suggestion that some of the men from Liverpool shared a similar ideology to the Bondi Beach killers Sajid and Naveed Akram. “There is no confirmed link between the men at Bondi and the seven men we detained yesterday.”

Lanyon was speaking whilst the “Liverpool Seven” had been remanded overnight and continued to be in custody. The atmosphere at the press conference appeared to be in keeping with the attitude of the Tactical Operations Unit, which was responding to immense pressure from the authorities to act against any potential wrongdoer in order to alleviate fallout from the Bondi mass shooting.

This press conference was similar in tone to other such announcements in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre, in that it involved repeated questions from reporters, who were seeking a more authoritarian response to the current crises from local officials and not just in terms of the rhetoric used, but further in respect of concrete actions on the ground.

“The actual motive or the potential violent attack is unknown,” Lanyon confessed, in response to a question about whether two of the men were under ASIO investigation and considering a knife had been located in one of the cars. “We were not prepared to take any risk. We have an incredibly low tolerance to risk, when we have information that someone may be prepared to use violence.”

Doubt the police

“NSW police rammed two cars and arrested and abused seven Muslim men, and the media has shared their images widely and repeated the police line that they may have been heading towards Bondi to commit another terrorist attack,” said anticop spokesperson Tom Raue in a 20 December 2025 statement relating to the so-called Liverpool Seven incident.

“Those men have now been released as there is no evidence they committed any crime. The men said they travelled from Victoria to Sydney for a beach holiday,” the justice advocate continued. “Now, we don’t know all the facts, but it looks like they’ve been arrested because they’re brown men heading to the beach.”

Raue likened the situation to the 2005 Cronulla riots, but instead of civilians draped in Southern Cross flags attempting to stop Muslims from getting in some surf, this time it was the Tactical Operations Unit. The anticop spokesperson also noted that the tactical operations cops used to dress in black, but as of last week, they’re dressing in army camouflage gear to “feel like big tough boys”.

In terms of the news reports pertaining to the incident, the police abolitionist suggested that journalists ought to pull their finger out, because simply repeating the police line, according to Raue, doesn’t cut it when it is well known that police lie and officers target people because of their race. So, police claims ought to be treated with a level of scepticism.

“We don’t stop mass shootings by ramming innocent people and telling the whole world that they are terrorists,” Raue underscored. “They are rightfully planning to sue the police.”

No intelligence threat whatsoever

The seven young men on being released by police were in quite a jovial state about the fudged operation, despite the fact that some of them had been injured during the ramming incident.

However, some journalists present as the young men were leaving the copshop seemed a bit put out by the fact that they didn’t present as hardened terrorists about to perpetrate some major wrongdoing.

“We just came to Sydney – we truly came here as part of our vacation,” one of the young men said in footage posted to social media on their release.

“The second day on leaving the Airbnb, the tactical unit, the highest coppers came. They came and stopped us at the lights. We were at the green lights.”

Another of the seven men chimed in that if the police had “turned on their lights” then the group “would have stopped”. “But they just smashed into the car.”

Indeed, by Saturday, it was being reported that there was no intelligence about any active threat.

The seven men are now seeking to sue the NSW police over the incident, with Sydney lawyer Ahmed Dib set to represent them. The lawyer told the ABC that the men were close friends on holidays. One of the men had previously lived in Sydney. They had come to town to visit friends. And on top of being rammed, these men had been injured and had firearms pointed at them.