Terrorist thugs' suspect harboured long hatred

Dezi Freeman, the man suspected of shooting and killing two police officers and injuring a third at a rural property in south-east Australia, said he had a history of unpleasant encounters with the police, whom he called "terrorist thugs", "frigging Nazis" and "Gestapo" that wore "the satanic symbol" of an "inverted pentagram" on their uniforms, according to court records.

- Nino Bucci Adeshola Ore Ariel Bogle

The chief commissioner of Victoria police, Mike Bush, said the suspect was believed to be heavily armed and remained at large last night. Police had been executing a search warrant on Tuesday in relation to alleged sexual offending by Freeman, who was previously known as Desmond Filby, when the shooting occurred.

Court records paint a picture of a man with a deep distrust of police and embrace of conspiracies: he once attempted to arrest a magistrate during a bizarre court hearing in Wangaratta.

Last year, a county court judge in Victoria found Freeman guilty of using a mobile phone while driving and refusing to provide a saliva sample to police in September 2020 on the Great Alpine Road.

But he began a legal battle after the judge cancelled Freeman's licence and disqualified him from obtaining a licence for two years from last April.

A Victoria supreme court judgment published last November, after Freeman sought a judicial review of the county court decision, showed he tried to argue that the police radar device used to detect speed may have been influenced by power lines and transformers, or microwave transmissions, in the area.