A 32-year-old Israeli man appeared in court Monday charged with the fatal stabbing of another Israeli near Sydney's Bondi Beach over the weekend.
Police who had been called to the scene found Hernan Guelman, 36, in critical condition, bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds. He was taken to hospital for emergency surgery but died several hours later.
Dror Salah turned himself in to police late Sunday, and he was charged with murder. He appeared before Sydney's Waverley Local Court on Monday and was refused bail.
A police fact sheet presented to the court alleged that Salah, his brother Ezra and a third unidentified man attacked Guelman, beating him with their fists and steel poles before stabbing him in the back, stomach and groin.
Salah's lawyer Greg Gould told the court his client had "disclosed his involvement in the death of Hernan Guelman," and provided police with other information.
The Foreign Ministry had said on Sunday that the case of an Israeli man who was stabbed to death by a gang of men outside a store in Sydney, Australia over the weekend was still under investigation and that no specific information has yet come to hand.
According to an Australian Associated Press report, Vic Alhadeff, the head of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, said that he had been contacted by witnesses to the attack, who told him that the 36-year-old victim was an Israeli citizen.
Only a few days prior to the murder a brick was thrown through the window of the rabbi's home adjacent to the Parramatta synagogue in another area of Sydney, and there was also an arson attempt on a Jewish youth center in Bondi.
There have been large-scale anti-Israel demonstrations in Sydney, with calls for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon and from Palestinian territories.
Security surrounding all Jewish institutions in Sydney has been intensified over the past few weeks.
