AFP accusations as Senate hearing for undercover officers are underway

A senate hearing's been told undercover officers from the Australian Federal Police 'encouraged' an autistic teenager's fixation with Islamic state.

Transcript

00:00 Well, this 13-year-old boy who had a low IQ, an IQ of no more than 71 and autism, had shown

00:09 some interest in ISIS.

00:11 It really troubled his parents.

00:12 His parents were from a non-English speaking background.

00:15 They went to the police and they went to the police asking for help and saying, "Look,

00:19 we're worried about our son.

00:20 He seems to be looking at some of these images online.

00:24 We're concerned about some of the things he's saying.

00:26 Can you help us?"

00:28 And initially the police set up a counter-violent extremism, a CVE course, which is meant to

00:35 be steering particularly young people away from any moves towards extremism.

00:41 But then within a handful of months, it went from that to a covert police operation where

00:48 the AFP and the deputy commissioner you saw in that exchange, the deputy commissioner

00:52 approved a covert operation against a 13-year-old boy with autism, where an operative played

00:58 two different guises and actively encouraged him towards extremism, put in this child's

01:05 head the idea of becoming a suicide bomber, put in this child's head the idea of becoming

01:09 a sniper, started introducing extremist language to him and drove him on a pathway towards

01:15 extremism.

01:17 And when the transcripts of those exchanges were reviewed by the magistrate, the magistrate

01:22 was horrified and very unusually ordered a permanent stay on the proceedings and was

01:28 deeply critical of the AFP's conduct.

01:31 I was deeply troubled by a complete lack of remorse, a complete lack of regret, and seeking

01:37 to justify, in that case, the second most senior person in the AFP seeking to justify

01:44 doing a covert operation against a 13-year-old boy.

01:48 And also I think we should put this in context.

01:51 They charged this boy with a series of charges and the AFP only charged less than 400 people

01:58 a year with their thousands and thousands of police and additional resources.

02:02 They only charged less than 400 people a year and they sought to justify that in the estimates

02:08 hearing by saying they only go after high value targets.

02:13 And when I said to them, how could you identify a 13-year-old boy with autism whose parents

02:18 are looking for help as a high value target, we just got this sort of wall of indifference.

02:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]