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BRISBANE: Australian detectives suspect the death of an elderly couple at their Brisbane home is a “terror incident” perpetrated by a man armed with a knife who was shot and killed by police, authorities said Friday (18 from December).
Raghe Abdi, 22, threatened police with a knife before he was shot to death on a road outside Brisbane on Thursday morning, officers said.
The bodies of an 87-year-old man and an 86-year-old woman were found in their home later Thursday, near where Abdi died, said Queensland State Police Deputy Commissioner Tracy Linford.
Linfold declined to detail how they died, but homicide detectives had found evidence that Abdi had been at the home, he said.
“A closer examination of both that scene and the scene of the police shooting yesterday has uncovered what we believe to be a direct link between the two issues,” he told a news conference on Friday.
He added that an item allegedly discovered at Abdi was believed to have been taken from the deceased couple’s home, while several items in the home were linked to the man.
Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said the known extremist had been acting alone.
“We had no choice but to declare this an incident of terrorism,” Carroll told reporters.
The Australian Federal Police suspect that Abdi had been influenced by the Islamic State group. He was arrested on suspicion of attempting to join extremists when he attempted to depart from Brisbane airport for Somalia in May 2019.
He was released without charge for lack of evidence, but his passport was canceled.
In June 2019, he was charged with other crimes, including refusing to give detectives his phone access code.
He was free on bail and was forced to use a GPS tracking device, which he had cut off before he was shot.
But his lawyer, speaking before the link to the murder investigation was made public, told national broadcaster ABC that the police were wrong to link him to terrorism and called yesterday’s shooting a “significant adverse event for Mental health”.
“When he went to Somalia to visit his relatives, they held him for 18 hours and investigated whether he was going to go to Somalia as a foreign fighter,” said Terry O’Gorman.
“There was no evidence to justify the arrest and 18 months later, he was never charged with that crime.”
