The descent of Dezi Freeman is warning of wider perils

“All the police in the courtroom and the magistrate are arrested according to law,” declares Dezi Freeman, as he gathers his papers on the small courtroom’s bench. The magistrate, a prosecutor and two police officers look on, unimpressed.

The officials are all wearing blue surgical face masks, given the hearing is during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, Freeman – the sovereign citizen now alleged to have fatally shot two police officers – is not.

“There are four armed criminals surrounding me in an intimidating manner,” Freeman continues, still gathering his papers.

“Off you go,” replies one of the police officers.

The interaction, posted online in December 2021, is one of Freeman’s many run-ins with police and the justice system in the years before Tuesday’s alleged fatal ambush at a rural property in Porepunkah.

He came to public attention for his anti-government stunts during the pandemic, making headlines in 2021 when he helped lead an attempted private prosecution of then-premier Daniel Andrews for treason.

The pandemic triggered an increase in Australians identifying with sovereign citizen views, experts who closely follow the anti-authority movement say.

Freeman may have been one of those. Locals and friends of the family told this masthead that during the pandemic, the former freelance photographer had gone from being “just a pretty ordinary country bloke” to someone who had disappeared down a rabbit hole.

A friend of Freeman’s wife, Mali, said Freeman had begun to change during the pandemic, believing the response had been mishandled by the Victorian government.

She said Freeman had begun to mobilise with a group of other people in the community who shared similar opposition to lockdowns, social restrictions and vaccines.

The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she believed others who shared these views began to live at the Rayner Track property where Freeman allegedly shot the police officers, sparking a massive manhunt.

She described those living at the property as a “squatting” or homesteading arrangement focused on self-sufficient living. Freeman was living in a bus at the site.

She said Freeman also believed he had been mistreated by police, including during an arrest, where he claimed he had been left with spinal injuries.

“There is a feud going on with the authorities and him, and this is how it’s played out,” the woman said.

“There’s a lot of people now joining their own little communities because they’re finding their tribe.

“I can see why, based on what happened during COVID, and I know that they’ve actively been involved in the protests and stuff like that. So yeah, that’s led them to remove themselves from society.”

Even after his alleged killing of the police, there is sympathy for Freeman in some corners of social media. One poster claiming to know him – whose identity could not be verified by this masthead – said he had been targeted unfairly by authorities for years, and snapped, although the alleged violence could not be condoned.

“He wasn’t some crackpot spouting gibberish,” the post said. It also took issue with the term sovereign citizen, saying Freeman was a “freedom fighter, a man who genuinely believed in resisting tyranny” in his many court battles.

A short drive from Porepunkah, at Crispy’s Hardware in Bright, the man behind the counter said he knew Freeman as a resident of Porepunkah rather than a customer, though he certainly didn’t like him.

“He was a f--- nutter,” he said. “It was COVID – it sent everyone nuts.”

While he doesn’t have many customers identifying themselves as sovereign citizens, the hardware seller does believe the number of anti-vax and conspiracy theorists coming to the region grew after the pandemic.

Dr Harry Hobbs, a University of New South Wales expert who has been examining the growth of sovereign citizens, said that, as vaccine and mask mandates and other pandemic-era restrictions had fallen away, there was hope those subscribing to the view that the legal system didn’t apply to them would, too.

“But it seems that that hasn’t been the case,” he said.

Hobbs said the growing popularity of the movement had come even though no sovereign citizen argument had ever been successful in court, in Australia or elsewhere.

“Why does it grow if it never wins?” he asked. “The answer, in my view, is that it’s very performative, and it’s a way of reasserting power and control and authority. And so when there’s a crisis moment, whether it’s a global pandemic where …. you may lose your mortgage, may lose your house, all this sort of stuff, it’s a way to try and take control back.”

In the dark days of the pandemic, in mid-2020, Freeman held extremely hostile attitudes towards police, posts on his Facebook account show.

“Now the demons have wings to keep us under more surveillance,” he wrote in June in response to an article in The Age reporting on new police helicopters fitted with high-definition cameras. “I sincerely pray they crash and burn.”

Later, as Melbourne and much of Victoria endured a series of punishing lockdowns, he referred to the police as “corrupt bastards”, “Gutless Gestapo dog vomit” and “terrorist scum”.

Professor David Heilpern, a former magistrate of 22 years, now the dean of law at Southern Cross University, said the 56-year-old father of three embodied the dark edge of the sovereign citizen movement.

“What we do know is that this guy typifies the sovereign citizen gang ... Launching private prosecutions against the premier, running traffic matters, then appealing them using bizarre arguments … and then, when not satisfied with that, calling the police and the courts various fascist names.”

Recent instances of violence linked to the sovereign citizen movement, including the 2022 Wieambilla siege in Queensland, where two police officers were murdered, may come as a shock to many Australians. But the ideology has long had a radical edge in the United States, where it originated.

Terry Nichols, one of the people involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed more than 150 people, filed a stream of lawsuits against the government before the attack.

“A criminologist in the US has amassed a database of over 600 cases of arson, of rape, of child abuse, of murder, including of police officers and other state actors, by sovereign citizens. So in the US, it’s always had that connection,” Hobbs said.

“In Australia … when we see these videos of people claiming … that they don’t consent to being stopped by the police, it was treated as a bit of a laugh, something that’s been funny. But for police officers involved in those cases, it wasn’t that funny because you don’t really know what’s going to happen.”

It’s no joke either for those who work in the courts, who are also facing increased threats.

Heilpern said when he had been a magistrate, he and others spent extended time under heavy protection due to threats made by a sovereign citizen.

“I was just talking to a magistrate today, who was saying they get warrants for their arrest sent to the courts. People who work in these areas are not weak, but when there’s this level of violence floating about, you really start to double lock your doors and think about getting a big dog.”

In December 2021, Freeman was arrested outside court in Myrtleford while protesting with 250 anti-government demonstrators on the day the charges privately filed by activists against then-premier Daniel Andrews were thrown out.

As Freeman was led away by police, he was heard calling the arresting officers “scumbags” and “criminal filth” who were obsessed with power.

Court documents show Freeman appeared in Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court on June 30, 2022, where he was fined $1200 and had his driver’s licence cancelled for two years.

At the time, he was found to have refused a drug test, used a handheld device while driving, and driven between 10 and 25 kilometres over the speed limit in a 60 km/h zone.

Lydia Khalil, an expert in terrorism and violent extremism at the Lowy Institute, said that before the pandemic, the sovereign citizen movement had been small and limited, but the powerful mix of isolation combined with a massive imposition of government authority had made the ideology more attractive to some.

“For many people, this was the first time that they actually experienced the full force of the state. And I think for a lot of people living in a democracy like Australia, they were actually probably quite shocked that the government could enact some of these measures,” she said.

“It’s receded slightly since COVID, but it’s actually still kind of captured some people … [and] research shows that believing in one conspiracy will often lead you to believe in others, even contradictory ones.”

Get alerts on significant breaking news as happens. Sign up for our Breaking News Alert.