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A Muslim group has urged the New South Wales police commissioner to apologise to the entire Muslim community after police disrupted a group of people praying during a protest against the visit by Israel’s president in Sydney on Monday.
Australian National Imams Council (Anic) confirmed it had received an apology from Mal Lanyon about the incident, but two other major Muslim groups Guardian Australia spoke to said they had not.
On Wednesday, Lanyon said he had spoken to Muslim community leaders about the incident in which police were filmed pulling praying people out of a line. The sheikh leading the prayer described the moment as “unhinged and aggressive”.
“I’ve made contact with senior members of the Muslim community and have apologised for any offence that may have been taken for those that were in a religious prayer,” Lanyon told 2GB.
“But the actions of the police [were] required to actually start dispersing the crowd, they were moving forward because of the actions of protesters.”
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The president of the Anic, Imam Shadi Alsuleiman, confirmed to Guardian Australia that Lanyon had contacted him to apologise for the matter.
However, Rateb Jneid, the president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (Afic), one of a coalition of Muslim and legal organisations to demand the police commissioner’s resignation, said he had not been contacted.
“Certainly no apology has been provided by him or the premier to the community through Afic.”
The Lebanese Muslim Association said it had also not been contacted with an apology and demanded Lanyon apologise publicly “to the entire Muslim community”.
Spokesperson Hajj Gamel Kheir said “anything less would be an insult to the Muslim community and a dangerous signal that attacking or disrupting public worship can now be done with impunity – and that Islamophobia is not only tolerated, but condoned and supported by police and government”.
Lanyon and the premier, Chris Minns, have been contacted for comment. On Tuesday, Minns told Guardian Australia “no one, not police nor the government, would have set out to cause offence” in relation to the incident.
“The government and NSW police will meet with Islamic community leaders to listen, explain the context, and work through concerns together.”
The NSW police and the Minns government have continued to defend the police’s response to a protest against the visit to Australia of Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, at Sydney’s town hall on Monday night, amid scrutiny of several incidents shared on social media which show police repeatedly punching protesters.
When asked about the footage, the NSW police minister, Yasmin Catley, said “innocent people got caught up in something that I know they would not normally participate in”.
She laid the blame at the organisers of the protest, the Palestine Action Group.
Asked about an incident in which a 16-year-old boy, Nedal, was allegedly pushed to the ground, kicked and restrained by police before being released without charge, Catley told ABC Sydney that the Palestine Action Group should apologise to Nedal and his family.
Nedal told the ABC he had been peacefully attending the protest alongside his mother, and sister and his infant niece, watching the group praying, when police officers allegedly assaulted him.
“They grabbed me by my keffiyeh, my scarf, and just dragged me, pulled me, kicked me on the floor, knee to my head, knee to my neck, and then put me in handcuffs.”
Asked if they would seek to “press charges” against police, his mother, Kefah Maradweh, said: “I will, because that was a deliberate attack on my son … who did nothing, just stand up for humanity.”
Catley said they could make a complaint to police, which would “be fully and properly investigated”.
Asked about the police response on Monday night, Lanyon told 2GB “each police officer is responsible for their action” but said incidents need to be taken in context.
Grace Tame criticised for chant
Meanwhile, state and federal opposition politicians have criticised former Australian of the Year, Grace Tame, who led a chant of “Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada” on Monday night.
Federal Liberal MP Julian Leeser and the NSW leader of the opposition, Kellie Sloane, have called for police to investigate Tame’s use of the contested phrase. Guardian Australia has been told NSW police are not investigating Tame in relation to the incident.
A NSW parliamentary inquiry has recommended “globalise intifada” be banned when it is used to incite hatred, harassment, intimidation or violence but Catley noted it was not currently unlawful to say the phrase.
Legislation to ban the phrase is not expected to be introduced while state parliament sits this month.
Protester who allegedly shone torch charged
NSW police have said they are “continuing to investigate the actions of protesters” by reviewing body camera and social media footage.
Police officers arrested 27 people on Monday, with nine later charged for a range of offences including assaulting police, assault, hindering police and behaving in an offensive manner. An additional six people were expected to be issued with court attendance notices for refusing or failing to comply with directions.
At a protest outside Surry Hills police station on Tuesday night organised by the Palestine Action Group to “rally against police brutality” at the town hall protest on Monday, speakers called for all charges against protesters to be dropped.
The protest ended mostly without incident, despite an hour-long standoff between protesters and police at its conclusion, after the arrest of 18-year-old Duke Austin for allegedly continuously shining a torch in the faces of police officers.
Austin was later charged with three counts of assault police officer in execution of duty without actual bodily harm, and custody of knife in public place.
Police opposed Austin’s release at a bail hearing on Wednesday because of the possible injury to the officers depending on “how powerful the light was”, while Austin’s solicitor questioned if shining a torch was sufficient to constitute an assault. Magistrate Daniel Covington said there “was no real possibility of a term of imprisonment even if he was convicted”.
Among the speakers at Tuesday’s protest was sheikh Wesam Charkawi, who led the prayer group moved on by police and called for Lanyon to resign. Guardian Australia has contacted Charkawi to ask him if Lanyon had contacted him.
NSW police declined to provide the details of the leaders Lanyon spoke to. Imam Shadi Alsuleiman, the Anic president, told reporters on Tuesday he had had “a frank conversation” with Lanyon.
“We agreed that we need to work through this, in a very constructive manner, but right now we demand immediate actions, an apology from the NSW police, and a public inquiry into why this take place,” he told a press conference on Tuesday convened by the Lebanese Muslim Association and the Anic to condemn the incident.
– with Australian Associated Press
