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Comment on How Australian undercover police ‘fed’ an autistic 13-year-old’s fixation with Islamic State

zik@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Even worse I can think of two other cases of the Federal Police and ASIO doing similar things:

Scott Rush, one of the “Bali 9”, was imprisoned in Indonesia after a tip-off from the AFP. This followed his parents alerting the AFP in advance and them reassuring the parents that they’d keep him out of trouble - then waiting until the crime had been committed and tipping off the Indonesian police to take the credit.
Jean-Philippe Wispelaere was a defence intelligence officer with mental illness who was imprisoned for selling secrets to Singapore. The “secrets” turned out to be publically available maps - not secret at all - and he had no interest in selling any information until the sting operation by an Australian government organisation and the FBI. He was eventually arrested by the FBI and remains in prison today.

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Deceptichum@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The wiki article for the second one paints a very different story.

In January the following year, Wispelaere quit his job and travelled to Bangkok, where he approached the embassy of a foreign country, offering to sell classified material to that country. (The country is reported by some sources to be Singapore). The country notified the United States, and the FBI began to investigate. Posing as agents for a foreign country (allegedly Russia), the FBI met Wispelaere in Bangkok, where he gave them hundreds of sensitive documents in exchange for cash. Later, he mailed more documents to an address in Virginia, also run by the FBI.

Do you have any source of information for your version of events? Would be curious to read more and update the wiki if need be.

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- zik@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Here’s one on his lack of mental compentence to testify at his own trial.
  
  Apparently Singapore contacted our intelligence service and ASIO organised the sting with the FBI. Prior to that he had no buyer. That’s consistent with the Wikipedia article.
  
  I can’t find a reference now for the documents not actually being classified - I remember this from media coverage at the time. I think the story was that they were USGS maps which were subsequently publically available or something like that.
  
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