Prosecution or persecution? Charges dropped against Bondi ‘F*** Israel tee-shirt man

Police have quietly dropped all charges against Andrew Brown, who was arrested for wearing a fuck Israel t-shirt. Michael West reports.

Just before Christmas, as a nation grieved and fought in the brutal aftermath of the Bondi terror attacks, police dropped all three charges against the hijab-wearing man. Down with Israel, down with Zionism T-shirt in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

A businessman, Palestinian supporter and former deputy mayor of Mosman, Andrew Brown, will seek costs and damages against the NSW Police. He had intended to defend the allegations by citing the Australian Constitution and its implied protections for political communication. And he had the money to do it.

Brown was arrested more than a year ago; At a public place on Bondi Beach, he says, he was guided along the sand and paraded around Bondi “like a prop at a public lecture”. Accusations followed. Bail conditions followed. A year-long legal battle began. And now he says that everything is quietly abandoned.

Bondi condemned the attacks

In an interview with MWM, Brown “unconditionally” condemned the Bondi attacks.

“I would like to reiterate my deep sympathy to the victims of the mass shooting at Bondi Beach, their families and everyone else traumatized by this horrific event. The violence was senseless and devastating. Nothing I said or did was intended to diminish or in any way exploit this tragedy. I condemn it completely.”

This story is about power, process, and what happens when the machinery of government is used more like sending a message than law enforcement.

Three charges gone. Two people were alleged to have caused the crime. One was allegedly threatened with harassment. He was withdrawn and dismissed.

On the face of it, this is not unusual. Cases are constantly being dropped. The evidence is collapsing. Witnesses disappear. Prosecutors are reconsidering. The system is flawed and sometimes it fixes itself.

Anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Bondi Beach man in ‘Fuck Israel’ T-shirt fights for freedom of expression in court

But Brown says this isn’t a fix. He said the outcome was predicted from the first week, including by those who filed a lawsuit against him.

He claims the case is being pursued not to win anyway, but to wear him down, distract him from Sydney’s eastern suburbs amid growing turmoil in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and serve as a warning to anyone who wants to bring protest to the streets of the wealthy, influential.

Faulty prosecution is a strategy

If this is true, this is not just a flawed prosecution. This is a strategy.

Brown says the real detail lies in a pair of phone calls.

Brown said the police prosecutor called his attorney early in the case. According to Brown, the prosecutor said he reviewed the relevant evidence and could not understand how the police could get a conviction. The prosecutor said he recommended withdrawing the charges.

Two weeks later, Brown says, the prosecutor called again. This time, he said, his position changed not because the evidence changed, but because he received instructions directly from the Commander of Strike Force Pearl. Continue with all topics regardless of the possible outcome.

There are only a handful of phrases in the legal world that make professionals stand tall. Whatever the possible outcome is, it’s one of them.

If Brown’s statement is correct, this raises a serious question. What is prosecution for if not the pursuit of a conviction based on evidence? This also raises a second question. When the prosecutor says the case cannot be successful, who decides whether the case should continue?

The following detail is quieter and probably more revealing.

Brown said one of the officers who arrested him at Waverley Police Station told him that most officers there supported his cause and the T-shirt he was wearing.

Brown claims the officer dismissed the case as nonsense.

He said they were told to go and arrest Brown. He doubted he would make it to court, and even if he did, it would be over in minutes.

In other words, Brown argues that even at the station level, the arrest is understood as an instruction, not an evidentiary response.

Then comes the third step, which takes the incident beyond a man’s confrontation with the police.

Brown said he had been contacted privately by several former officers and their duty partners, as well as former officers from Waverley Local Area Command. He said these contacts described pressure within the command to accommodate the demands of the local Jewish community on politically sensitive issues.

media clutter

He said a former officer told him that when he resisted this pressure, he was assigned to desk duty and then dismissed from command.

These allegations are serious. These are allegations at this stage. However, these are not the kinds of allegations that a functioning institution would shrug its shoulders at. They describe a culture in which foreign political pressure is not only felt but also applied, and domestic dissent is also punished.

Daily Tele attacks quickly

Brown says that while the legal process is developing, another parallel process is also running alongside it.

He says he was mocked and condemned in the mainstream media before the facts were tested. He says he was exposed and subjected to attempts to disrupt business relationships. This type of pressure is difficult to measure but easy to recognize.

It is not only the Court that punishes. Sometimes society does this with pleasure.

Then there was bail, extraordinary bail

The purpose of bail is to manage risk, not to manage politics. Brown said the bail and bail conditions imposed by Waverley Local Court were extraordinary and effectively excluded him from the eastern suburbs for almost a year. The practical consequence, he says, is exile without conviction.

If this were true, the situation would become a familiar, modern pattern. Not imprisonment, just restriction. Not a sentence, just tiredness.

The process turns into punishment.

Brown says he’s not backing out. He said he welcomed the issue to be heard publicly and would fight it. Later, the case collapsed when it became clear that he would not withdraw. The charges were withdrawn.

There is a final dimension that takes this beyond the local police force and into the constitutional arena.

Brown said he challenged the constitutionality of the charges, arguing that they violated freedom of political communication and actual freedom of political participation, which come from Australia’s constitutional system. He said the NSW Attorney General attended the hearings to defend the charges.

If this is true, it raises questions that a responsible government must answer in the light of day. Why would you use the state’s resources to defend charges that prosecutors, on Brown’s account, already determined would not be successful? In an environment where basic political freedoms are being debated, why would we involve the executive in a case that has now been withdrawn?

And after all this, silence.

Brown says there is no explanation. No apology. There is no public explanation as to why the case is ongoing. There is no word on whether command instructions were given. It’s unclear what Strike Force Pearl is doing and why.

In making accusations, the state borrows the authority of the public. When he withdraws them, he owes the public an explanation, especially if there are credible allegations that the trial was being pursued for deterrence rather than justice.

So the current questions are not rhetorical. They are researchers.

Who allowed this and why?

Who (if anyone) authorized the instruction to proceed regardless of the likely outcome? What was the basis? Who documented it? What did the prosecutor record after the first search and after the second search? What role did Strike Force Pearl play and under what authority?

Have NSW Police resources been expended on what appears to be an internally unsustainable prosecution? Have internal concerns been expressed and, if so, by whom? And are there officers in Waverley Local Area Command who can attest to the culture of political repression?

The Attorney General’s involvement raises other questions. Who authorized the intervention? On what basis? What advice was received? So why was it deemed appropriate for the state to defend the charges, which were later withdrawn?

Andrew Brown at the Humanity Walk on the Sydney Harbor Bridge

A detailed public statement answering these questions should now be required from NSW Police. It’s not a line about operational issues. Not a shrug. A statement describing decision-making, oversight, and actions. If the organization believes the allegations are false, it should say so and explain why. If he believes that a mistake has been made, he should say so and explain what has changed.

This isn’t about hurting a man’s pride. This concerns whether the criminal process can be used to silence political protests through attrition and exclusion, especially in cases where powerful local interests want the noise to stop.

Because if this can be done once, publicly, and then quietly abandoned, it will not be an aberration.

There will be a template.

Michael West was founded Michael West Media Focusing on public interest journalism in 2016, particularly the increasing power of corporations over democracy. West was previously a journalist and editor for Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and was even once a stockbroker.