SYDNEY, Dec. 19 — Seven men who were arrested in southwest Sydney on Thursday over alleged plans to commit a violent act in the wake of the Bondi Beach shooting have been released without charge, police said on Friday.
The men were arrested in southwest Sydney by heavily armed tactical officers on Thursday after the police force in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) received information that a violent act was possibly being planned, but were all released from custody around 4 p.m. local time on Friday.
NSW Police Force Commissioner Mal Lanyon said at a press conference on Friday that an investigation had found no confirmed links between the men and the two perpetrators of the fatal mass shooting at Bondi Beach on Sunday night.
Lanyon said that police believed that the group of men, who had traveled to NSW from the neighboring state of Victoria, may have intended to visit Bondi Beach, but that the likelihood of a violent attack is unknown and that they could not be detained without sufficient evidence for criminal charges.
Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said earlier on Friday that police believed the men had links to extremist ideology. Authorities previously confirmed that the perpetrators of the Bondi Beach shooting were motivated by Islamic State ideology.(Namibia Daily News/Xinhua)
