page_title: Denis Michael Rohan
section_title: Arson of Al-Aqsa
hierarchical_section_title: Denis Michael Rohan / Arson of Al-Aqsa
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of Al Aqsa Mosque Jerusalem.
context_page_description: Denis Michael Rohan was a Christian Australian citizen who, on 21 August 1969, set fire to the pulpit of the Al-Aqsa mosque, in Jerusalem. Rohan was arrested for the arson attack on 23 August 1969. He was tried, found to be insane, and hospitalised in a mental institution. On 14 May 1974 he was deported from Israel "on humanitarian grounds, for further psychiatric treatment near his family". He was subsequently transferred to the Callan Park Hospital in Australia. Some sources say that he died in 1995, but an investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2009 found that was still alive then and a few years later he spoke to an ABC journalist.
context_section_description: On the morning of 21 August 1969, Rohan started a fire fuelled by kerosene in the al-Aqsa Mosque. The fire destroyed an intricately designed 12th-century minbar, or pulpit, known as the minbar of Saladin.
  Rohan, who had been in Israel on a tourist visa, was arrested two days later. He pleaded insanity and was deported.
caption: The minbar of Saladin in the al-Aqsa Mosque (photographed 1900-1910)
exif: {}