Australian police charged five teenagers on Thursday with terrorism-related offenses following the stabbing of a bishop in a Sydney church.
They were arrested in the region Sydney on Wednesday in a major operation by the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team.
Police said that they were associates of a 16-year-old boy previously charged in the knifing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel on April 15 at his church.
The five are set to appear in court on Thursday.
What new charges were laid?
The latest charges included possessing violent extremist material, conspiring to prepare for a terrorist act and carrying a knife in public, New South Wales (NSW) police said.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson alleged Wednesday that the arrested boys "adhered to a religiously motivated, violent extremist ideology."
Two of them, aged 16 and 17, have been charged with conspiring to engage in or planning a terrorist act, a police statement said.
The older boy was also charged with carrying a knife in public.
Two others were charged with possessing or controlling violent extremist material accessed online, police said.
Who is the bishop who was stabbed?
Emmanuel is a bishop at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the Sydney suburb of Wakefield.
He is known as a social media star with followers around the world and a fiery critic of homosexuality, COVID vaccinations, Islam and US President Joe Biden's election.
The Assyrian Church, which has its world headquarters in Iraq, is a Christian sect with its historical origins in parts of modern Turkey, Syria and Iran.
