The 20-year-old man was one of three masked offenders who broke into the Adass Israel Synagogue, doused the interior with flammable liquid then set it alight in the early hours of Dec. 6, 2024, a police statement alleged.
The fire caused extensive damage to the synagogue and a worshipper sustained minor injuries.
The Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which brings together federal and state police with a spy agency, charged the man, who has not been named, with offenses including arson.
He was charged in a Melbourne jail where he was already being held in custody on unrelated offenses. Police declined to elaborate on those offenses.
His co-accused Giovanni Laulu, 21, was arrested in July last year and another suspect, Younes Ali Younes, 20, was arrested a month later.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last year accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard of directing the synagogue fire and an arson attack two months earlier at a Sydney kosher eatery, Lewis’ Continental Kitchen.
Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the nation’s main domestic spy agency, said the Revolutionary Guard used a “complex web of proxies to hide its involvement” in both antisemitic attacks.
Iran’s ambassador to Australia and another three Iranian diplomats were expelled. Tehran has denied Australia’s allegations.
