From Wieambilla to Porepunkah, violent anti-government extremists' are a growing threat

"The political sociologist and associate professor of politics at Deakin University was given access to the killers' writings, to paint a picture of the process of radicalisation that led Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train to shoot three police officers and a neighbour in cold blood in a 2022 ambush at a remote property about 350km west of Brisbane. He was one of two experts who later gave evidenceat a coronial inquest into the deaths."

"despite the fact that Dezi Freeman, who is accused of the Victorian attack, has been linked to the sovereign citizen movement, which the Trains did not identify with. Both, says Roose, were anti-government extremists. In both cases, obviously an ideological orientation and deep hatred of police was critical, he says. Freeman called police terrorist thugs, frigging Nazis and Gestapo. Gareth Train the leader at Wieambilla called them devils and demons and, Roose told the inquest last year, believed himself to be at war with police ."

Josh Roose analysed the killers' writings to map the radicalisation that led Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train to ambush and kill three police officers and a neighbour at Wieambilla in 2022. He gave expert evidence at a coronial inquest. Nearly a year later, three police officers were shot near Porepunkah in Victoria, leaving two dead and one hospitalised. Roose identified remarkable parallels between the incidents as anti-government extremism driven by ideological orientation and deep hatred of police. Dezi Freeman has links to sovereign citizen pseudolaw beliefs. The Trains adopted a pre-millennial, dispensationalist apocalyptic Christian theology.

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