Senior cop Tracy Linford’s Weiambilla analysis questioned by criminologist.

By TONY MOBILIFONITIS

A PROMINENT criminologist who began questioning a Queensland Police analysis of the Weimbilla shooting was suddenly and mysteriously cut off from an interview on ABC radio on Friday.

Bond University criminologist professor Dr Terry Goldsworthy, a former police officer who is occasionally interviewed on the ABC, was asked about comments by Queensland deputy police commissioner Tracey Linford in connection with the shooting.

Prof. Goldsworthy immediately began to question Linford’s definition of the shooting as a terrorism event, citing the official definition of terrorism under Australian law, that is an act or threat that is intended to advance a political, ideological or religious cause or coerce or intimidate an Australian or foreign government or the public.

Prof Goldsworthy was about to elaborate on that point when he was cut off mid-sentence, prompting the interviewer to comment how sudden and strange the cut-off was. The line was previously very clear without signs of phone signal weakness.

Linford created controversy in Christian circles when she said Christian extremist ideology has been linked to other attacks around the world but the Weimbilla shooting was “the first time we’ve seen it Australia”.

“We absolutely believe they acted as an autonomous cell, but one of our inquiries is that they did make social media postings and there were people in the US who did monitor those social media postings and make responses to those social media postings.”

Police are extremely sensitive about the shooting, and Cairns News is aware of Nathaniel Train’s daughter Madeline being taken in for questioning by police in Mt Isa over a post she made on Instagram. Cairns News has been unable to find an online link to the interview.

Dr Goldsworthy, a former Queensland detective inspector, has studied the link between evil and armed conflicts using the Waffen-SS as a case study. He recently published his first book, Valhalla’s Warriors, which examines genocide committed by the Nazi SS in Russia during World War II.

He has also contributed a chapters to the tertiary textbooks, Serial Crime and Forensic Criminology, published by Academic Press and contributed a number of articles to the Australian Police Journal.