In an effort to thwart terrorist operations and stop online radicalization, Canberra has for the first time placed counterterrorism funding sanctions on a completely online organization.
The white supremacist terrorist network Terrorgram has been sanctioned, the Australian government declared.
According to local channel SBS News, Foreign Minister Penny Wong issued a statement regarding the decentralized online network that encourages racially motivated violence and white supremacist ideology.
For the first time, a wholly online organization has been subject to counterterrorism financial sanctions from Canberra.
“It will now be a criminal offense to use or deal with the assets of, or make assets available to, Terrorgram,” Wong stated on Monday.
Heavy fines and a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail are among the penalties.
As part of its commitment to “disrupting the activities of terrorists and violent extremists and preventing them from recruiting and radicalizing people online,” Wong continued.
In the announcement, she added that Australia had re-listed four other organizations that support violent extremist and nationalist beliefs for counterterrorism financial sanctions.
Neo-fascist, white nationalist, and militant accelerationist ideologies are promoted by the internet network Terrorgram, which mostly uses the Telegram messaging software.
The UK Home Office claims that the group’s goal is “the collapse of the Western world and a ‘race war’ through violent acts of terrorism.”
In April 2024, the United Kingdom declared Terrorgram to be a prohibited terrorist organization.
Terrorgram has been linked to at least two attacks: the fatal shooting of two men at a pub in the Slovakian capital Bratislava in October 2022, and the live-streamed stabbing of five people by an 18-year-old guy outside a mosque in Türkiye in August of last year.
“The new secretary-general of the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, has also been sanctioned by the Australian government,” Wong said.
After Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah, was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in October of last year, Qassem was chosen as the new leader.
