Australian charged over 80s alleged hate crime murder of gay American

More than 30 years after American Scott Johnson was killed in a suspected gay hate crime in Australia, police said Tuesday they had arrested and charged a man with his murder.

Detectives arrested the 49-year-old in the leafy Sydney suburb of Lane Cove on Tuesday and laid murder charges the same day.

The suspect's name was not released.

The breakthrough in the cold case came two months after the victim's family doubled a police reward in the case to Aus$2 million (US$1.3 million).

The 27-year-old mathematician Johnson's naked body was found at the base of a cliff in the Sydney suburb of Manly in December 1988, and police at the time ruled his death a suicide.

But a coroner found in 2017 that it was likely Johnson had been killed in a hate crime, suggesting he was either pushed over the cliff or fell while trying to escape unidentified assailants.

The inquest found that gangs roamed Sydney at the time searching for gay men to attack, and had been known to rob or assault men at the "gay beat" where Johnson's folded clothing was discovered.

In 2018, police announced an Aus$1 million reward for information leading to an arrest in the case, which was doubled when Johnson's brother, Steve, matched the amount in March.

Steve Johnson, who had long pushed police to investigate his brother's death, said it was "remarkable" the alleged killer had been apprehended almost 32 years later.

"This is a very emotional day. Emotional for me, emotional for my family who... love Scott dearly," he said in a video statement.

"It's emotional, I'm sure, for the gay community for whom Scott had come to symbolise the many dozens of other gay men who lost their lives in the 1980s and '90s in a world full of anti-gay prejudice and hatred."

In 2018, New South Wales police acknowledged that at least 27 murders between the 1970s and 2000 were homophobic hate crimes, admitting the force had played a part in marginalising the LGBT community and enabling society's "acceptance of shocking violence directed at gay men" during the period.

"It is clear and beyond question that levels of violence inflicted upon gay men in particular were elevated, extreme and often brutal," police said at the time.

The suspect in Johnson's murder is due to appear in a local Sydney court on Wednesday.

Agence France-Presse

One dead, six wounded in Hamburg supermarket knife attack

HAMBURG, Germany—One person was killed and six others were injured on Friday when a failed asylum-seeker brandishing a knife attacked shoppers in a Hamburg supermarket, shouting “Allahu Akbar” before being overpowered by passers-by, police and officials said.

The attack had been motivated by “hate,” mayor Olaf Scholz said, although he stopped short of declaring it a terrorist incident.

“It makes me especially angry that the perpetrator appears to be a person who claimed protection in Germany and then turned his hate against us,” he said.

If confirmed as an Islamist attack, it would be the first in Germany since Tunisian Anis Amri drove a truck into crowds at a Berlin Christmas market on December 19, killing 12 and injuring 48.

Police said that the man was a 26-year-old born in the United Arab Emirates, but were unable to immediately confirm his nationality or identify the motive behind the violence.

News website Spiegel Online reported that the individual was named Ahmad A., who had arrived in Germany seeking asylum and had contact with the Islamist scene as well as a history of mental health problems and drug use.

The attacker had been scheduled to be deported, but the process had been held up as he lacked identity papers, Scholz said.

A police murder unit and a squad specializing in politically-motivated crime are investigating the attack.

High alert

Germany has been on high alert about the threat of a jihadist attack since Amri’s rampage in Berlin, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.


Jihadists have also carried out a string of random assaults in European countries using knives.

Like the Hamburg attacker, Amri was a failed asylum seeker who could not be deported for lack of documents.

The similarity between the two cases risks reopening barely-healed wounds over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than million migrants into Germany since 2015, with just two months to go until legislative elections in September.

“These criminals want to poison our free society with fear, but they will not succeed,” mayor Scholz said.

Improvised weapons

The attacker stabbed to death a 50-year-old man, believed to be a German citizen, and “struck out wildly” at others, wounding a woman and four men aged 19 to 64, police said.

Another 35-year-old man was hurt while overpowering the attacker in the street alongside other passers-by shortly after the killing.

“A crowd of about 30 people ran out of the supermarket. They yelled that someone had been stabbed… we saw a man go past with a big knife, like a butcher’s knife, in his hand,” eyewitness Ralf Woyna told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Woyna had been sitting at a cafe opposite the entrance to the shop where the chase began.

“Two customers who also looked Middle Eastern took all the chairs from the cafe and ran after him. I lost sight of them for a minute and heard a shout of ‘Allahu Akbar’ in the distance, I knew it was an attack straight away,” he added.

An amateur mobile phone video published by news site Spiegel Online showed a handful of pursuers confronting the attacker, a bearded man wearing a T-shirt and jeans, amid dense city traffic.

They can be seen hurling chairs at him to keep him at a safe distance as he yells and brandishes the knife.

According to Spiegel Online, the 35-year-old man injured during the struggle was the one who finally forced the suspect to the ground, using a pole.

The witnesses slightly hurt the attacker while they were overpowering him, before handing him over to police.

Newspaper Bild published images of the man lying handcuffed on the ground and sitting in the back seat of a police car, a bloodied white bag pulled over his head.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net