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Terror expert calls for caution from authorities following Queanbeyan fatal stabbing
By Andrew Brown
A leading expert on terrorism has warned authorities not to jump to conclusions in automatically labelling criminal acts as terror attacks.
Director of the Terrorism Law Reform Project at the University of New South Wales Nicola McGarrity said classifying crimes as terrorism before investigations were concluded created a sense of panic in the community.
Police and emergency services at the scene.Credit: Karleen Minney
"The nature of terrorism is such that when people hear that word, they jump to conclusions, and it creates a sense of hysteria and fear in public," Dr McGarrity said.
"The danger in doing that is to create a broad sense of fear in the public that's unjustified."
The Caltex service station where an employee was fatally stabbed.Credit: Karleen Minney
The comments from Dr McGarrity come after a 14-hour crime spree in Queanbeyan last week, which resulted in the fatal stabbing of service station attendant Zeeshan Akbar.
While the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism are investigating the incident, neither of the teenagers has been charged with terror-related offences.
Speaking in the hours after the incident, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the circumstances of the stabbing warranted the involvement of counter-terrorism police.
Caltex service station attendant Zeeshan Akbar was fatally stabbed while at work.Credit: Facebook
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burns said shortly after the fatal stabbing there was some evidence the crime spree could be related to terrorism.
"That information comes from physical evidence at the scene and other sources," she said.
Police told Fairfax Media that the victim's blood was used to scrawl letters, possibly 'ISIS', on the window of the service station.
Dr McGarrity said there had been a tendency over the past few years to classify criminal acts as terrorism, especially in the aftermath of the Sydney Lindt cafe siege in December 2014.
"I don't think that this is a new phenomenon in imagining acts of crime automatically as terror," Dr McGarrity said.
"People's attitudes haven't changed in terms of having an incident characterised as terrorism, especially when it's committed by a random member of the public."
Professor Clive Williams from the Australian National University's Centre for Military and Security Law said it was becoming more common for members of the public to assume certain criminal incidents were terrorism.
"Often people jump to conclusions, that's just the fear at the back of their minds," he said.
"People have terrorism more in their minds now."
The terrorism expert said often police were more cautious in labelling an event as related to terrorism.
"Generally speaking, authorities are more likely to say it's not related to terrorism," he said.
"The possibility of a terrorist link can bring a lot more resources to the investigation, however."