The pair, a 20-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy, were arrested in their homes in Sydney during counter-terrorism raids on Thursday.
According to the Australian Federal Police’s deputy commissioner for national security, Michael Phelan, the suspects were arrested thanks to evidence gathered during raids late last year in which 15 suspects were arrested over an alleged plot to kidnap and behead a man. Three other people are already in jail for the same case, police said.
“Last December, there were a number of documents seized as related to the search warrants we undertook in Sydney and those documents clearly talked about a plan and there was government buildings named in those plans," he said, adding that one of the buildings was one of the Australian Federal Police offices.
The arrests were part of Operation Appleby, an ongoing investigation in Australia probing people suspected of being involved in domestic acts of terrorism and foreign incursions into Syria and Iraq, and financially supporting terrorist organizations such as the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
