Australia

Just before Christmas, as a nation grieved and feuded in the truculent aftermath of the Bondi terror attacks, police dropped all three criminal charges against the man who wore a Fuck Israel Fuck Zionism tee-shirt in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Andrew Brown, a businessman, Palestinian supporter and former deputy mayor of Mosman, will be seeking costs and a damages claim against NSW Police. He had intended to defend the claims by invoking Australia’s Constitution and its implied protections for political communication. And had the money to do it.

Brown was arrested more than a year ago; in public on Bondi Beach, then he says he was led along the sand, paraded around Bondi “like a prop in a public lesson”. Charges followed. Bail conditions followed. A year of legal struggle ensued. And now, he says, the whole thing has been quietly abandoned.

The charges are from last year, unrelated to the recent shooting