Denis Michael Rohan

Denis Michael Rohan (1 July 1941 - 20 March 2013) was an Australian arsonist responsible for the Al-Aqsa mosque fire, which took place in Jerusalem on 21 August 1969.

His attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque, which began after he set fire to the Minbar of Saladin, inflamed tensions across the Muslim world and triggered the most high-level crisis in the Middle East since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.

Rohan was arrested by Israeli authorities on 23 August 1969; he was tried in Israel, found to be insane, and subsequently admitted to a mental institution. On 14 May 1974, Rohan was deported to Australia "on humanitarian grounds, for further psychiatric treatment near his family" and transferred to the Callan Park Hospital on the outskirts of Sydney. Some sources claimed that he had died on 6 October 1995, but a 2009 investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) found that he was still alive. Rohan also spoke to an ABC journalist a few years after the findings, but died on 20 March 2013.

Mental illness and religious convictions According to a detailed article by Abraham Rabinovich, Rohan's first known case of auditory hallucinations (which he believed to be divine "revelations") came in Australia in 1964, when he was asked by his employer to transport "an augur, a 30-foot-long lift device" by truck 35 miles to another location, but was commanded by a voice in his head not to do so. His manager told him he was "mentally sick", and he was committed to Bloomfield Mental Hospital for four months. After his release he moved first to England where he worked at a hospital in Middlesex, and then to Israel where he arrived by ship in March 1969. He volunteered at Mishmar Hasharon kibbutz in the Sharon Valley between Haifa and Tel Aviv where he stayed a few months. According to kibbutzniks, one night they were startled by wild shouts from Rohan; when one volunteer attempted to calm him, Rohan told them he thought that perhaps he was Jewish. He spoke to an American theology student and volunteer of "the imminence of the Messiah's coming and the construction of a new temple".

Rohan, who had been in Israel on a tourist visa, was arrested two days later. He pleaded insanity and was deported.

Motives

Rohan, a Christian, stated that he considered himself "the Lord's emissary" and that he tried to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque acting upon divine instructions to enable the Jews of Israel to rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount in accordance with the Book of Zechariah, thereby hastening the second coming of Jesus Christ. Rohan mistakenly believed that the al-Aqsa Mosque occupied the site of the temple, when in fact the Dome of the Rock did. The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London pictured Rohan on its front page with a copy of The Plain Truth magazine sticking out from his outside jacket pocket.

On 26 September 1969, Armstrong, in a letter to financial contributors to his The World Tomorrow program, distanced himself from Rohan:

Prior to the Rohan incident, in 1968 Armstrong, via WCG's sponsored Ambassador College, had become involved with the Israeli government in archaeological digs in the area of the Temple Mount.

Allegations of Israeli complicity Many Muslims alleged Rohan's actions were part of a wider plot by Israelis, while some Israelis have attacked widely-repeated claims by some Palestinians and other Muslims that Rohan was Jewish, when in fact he was Christian. Palestinian officials have alleged that the arson was carried out with the blessing of Israeli authorities and minimize the culpability of Rohan, while Israeli firefighters at the scene later complained that the hostility directed at them by an assembled crowd of Palestinians interfered with their ability to put out the fire.