South Australia Police has suddenly dropped a charge against a patriotic protester who held a sign of fugitive alleged cop killer Dezi Freeman at a March for Australia rally in Adelaide.
Golden Grove personal trainer Lee Roberts, 39, was charged with “exhibit indecent material in a public place” for displaying the placard on August 31 after being attacked in the media and by Premier Peter Malinauskas, and was due to face Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday.
But late on Monday police informed his lawyer they were withdrawing the charge in court, and Mr Roberts, who was set to plead not guilty, told Noticer News the decision showed he should never have been charged in the first place, and that the attempted prosecution was “malicious and politically driven”.
“It was an attack on the foundational principles of Western democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of political communication, and Australia’s proud tradition of political satire. The fact that it progressed at all is a damning reflection of how policing in South Australia is being conducted,” he said.
“Rather than upholding justice, the priority appears to have been ‘being seen to do something’, even if that meant wasting overstretched court resources and pursuing a charge that had no reasonable prospect of success.”
Mr Roberts revealed police had been following and monitoring him, and had treated him like a major criminal rather than a peaceful protester exercising his right to political expression.
“Police conducted repeated patrols past my workplace and my partner’s home, the kind of surveillance normally reserved for dangerous criminals, not an individual accused of a minor summary offence,” he said.
“The sheer scale of the resources deployed was staggering and utterly unjustifiable. It demonstrates a culture where power can be weaponised without accountability, and where there are no effective safeguards against malicious or politically driven prosecutions. That must change.”
The bodybuilding coach also took aim at the corporate media for working alongside police to get him charged, and at Mr Malinauskas for smearing him to millions to Australians.
“The same media establishment that cries out whenever its own freedoms are challenged was more than willing to assist in suppressing the speech of an ordinary citizen,” he said.
“Channel 7 went so far as to announce on air that it was actively working with police, handing over footage in a clear attempt to silence me because my views are inconvenient to their interests. It has never been clearer that segments of the media in this country are not watchdogs of power: they are enforcers for it.
“The Malinauskas government also played its part. The Premier himself publicly called for my arrest, confirming what was already obvious: the state, the police, and sections of the media were acting in unison: the government giving direction, the police acting as the enforcement arm, and the media carrying the propaganda.”
Mr Roberts said he was deeply concerned for the future of democracy in Australia, as “many elected representatives no longer listen to the people they claim to serve”.
“On the issue of mass immigration, one of the most pressing concerns of everyday Australians: the political class continues to act in open defiance of public sentiment, even in the face of recent survey data from the Institute of Public Affairs which indicated that 71% of Australians supported a temporary pause in immigration until more infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals, housing) is built,” he said.
“The Labor–Liberal duopoly appears united only in ignoring the will of the people. If we do not regain democratic control of our borders and uphold the expectation of assimilation, our way of life will be fundamentally altered, perhaps irreversibly.”
After being charged Mr Roberts told Noticer News his sign intended to generate discussion of “the current state of Australia with its ever overreaching government and police state”, and that parallels could be drawn between Freeman and Australian folk hero Ned Kelly.
He said the media had sensationalised the sign and blown it out of context, and that it was well received on the day and not intended to be seen by the family members of the fallen officers, who he said did not deserve to die.
Victoria Police are still hunting for Freeman, a so-called sovereign citizen who allegedly shot dead two police officers when they raided his home in the small town of Porepunkah on August 26, and have been unable to track him down despite placing $1 million bounty on his head and conducting a massive manhunt.
The dropping of Mr Roberts’ charge comes after South Australia Police did the same with a series of minor charges such as “loitering” laid against a group of nationalist activists who were arrested while celebrating Australia Day in Adelaide.
They included Western Australian National Socialist Network member Stephen Wells, who spent four months in jail on remand before his charges were dropped, and Victorians Thomas Sewell and Nathan Bull, while prominent activist Joel Davis is still facing a “Nazi symbols” charge over a belt buckle.
Header image: Left, Lee Roberts (supplied). Right, his protest sign (7News).
