A really weird case has appeared in the Australian press about a man who bought a scimitar from Pakistan and made comments regarding carrying out a revenge attack for the Christchurch mosque shootings. The man in question, a former journalist called James Michael Waugh aged 28 and from Canberra, wanted to lure Christians to his home and then murder them.
Waugh has been arrested and brought before the courts on charges of threat to kill and commit grievous bodily harm and online communications offences. According to a report in the Canberra Times (h/t ROP) Australian security services were alerted to Waugh’s alleged intentions when it was reported to them that Waugh was issuing threats. The Canberra Times said that one of the communications from Waugh read:
“I have issued threats, along with my name and address, to every coward dog church in Canberra. If you know someone with balls send them along. I’ve bought scimitar and intend to cut their heads off in my front yard as reprisal,”
I must admit that this is a really odd case. The Australian mental health services have visited Waugh and have found that he is not suffering from any mental illness but was described by them as ‘opinionated, delusional and a bit paranoid’. I see no evidence from the article that Waugh is a convert to Islam although this may be information that has not yet come into the public eye. He could I suppose be a violent left-winger but then again he may not be. There is no indication that he’s a member of any of the violent antifa type groups but again more information may come out about his motivations when the full starts at a later date.
It’s very difficult at this stage to decide exactly what path Waugh is following and what are his motivations. The courts however obviously consider him as the sort of person who should be remanded in custody as Waugh had expressed a desire to move to a different Australian state and was considered as a flight risk.
There’s nothing that obviously sticks out to say that this man is a clean hands jihadi, someone with no criminal record or contact with Islamic terror organisations. It is also likely that someone undertaking this role as a hidden jihadi would be more careful with what he said and did. The fact that he was so gobby seems to preclude him being backed by any serious jihadi group. The one thing that screams ‘Jihadi’ to me is the fact that Waugh wanted to be a ‘martyr’ when he carried out the attack. Lefties don’t normally want to martyr themselves, that’s mostly an Islamic thing.
As I said, this case is odd as well as being concerning. It may well be that what we have here is some sort of violent nutter whose condition has not yet been properly diagnosed by any psychiatrist. In any event I’m pleased that this person was stopped from carrying out his plan and is safely incarcerated pending his upcoming trial.
