Police in Western Australia are conducting a crackdown on firearms owned by members of the “sovereign citizen” movement, an ideology that rejects the legitimacy of the government.
A person believed to hold such views is wanted for the murder of two Victoria State police officers in August.
The suspect in those murders is a 56-year-old man known as Dezi Freeman, well-known on Australian social media as a conspiracy theorist and anti-government activist. His social media footprint grew considerably during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
According to his neighbors, Freeman – born under the name Desmond Christopher Filby – began to adopt more extreme views and behavior following government-imposed coronavirus lockdowns and behavior codes.
“He was anti-everything to do with it,” a local acq