CANBERRA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Extremist refugees who carry out terrorist attacks in the name of Islamic State (IS) on Australian soil are the product of Australian culture, the boss of the nation's intelligence body has said.
Fronting a Senate Estimates committee late on Tuesday night Duncan Lewis, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said that refugees who ended up the target of counter-terror operations usually had limited exposure to their home countries.
He said that 13 counter-terrorism operations had been executed by Australian authorities in the last three years.
"There were 56 individuals who were primary targets of these 13 disruption operations and they were either arrested, charged or the subject or search warrants," Lewis said.
"Only seven of the 56 individuals came to Australia as refugees and six of those seven migrated to Australia with their parents as young children aged 11 or younger.
"The trend since 2014 is consistent with longer-term trends dating back to 2002. Where an individual is involved in attack planning and arrived as a refugee they generally arrived as a child and have spent more time in Australia than they have elsewhere."
Since the start of 2014 there has been seven terror incidents in Australia resulting in nine deaths, four of which were the perpetrators in a situation.
The most notable is the 2014 Sydney cafe siege where Man Haron Monis took 18 people hostage in a Central Business District cafe. Police stormed the building after a 16-hour standoff when Monis executed one of the hostages. A second hostage was killed by a ricocheted bullet while Monis was killed by police.
Lewis told the committee that it remained critical that Australian authorities maintain a good relationship with the Islamic Australian community, saying the overwhelming majority did not pose a threat.
"Stereotyping any group as a source of threat is not helpful. It is behaviour, not background, which ASIO is investigating," he said.
"Our focus is identification and prevention of terrorist attacks and to achieve this we have to be vigilant regarding the course of threat."
