Denis Michael Rohan (born 1 July 1941) is 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 for the Insane on the outskirts of Sydney. Some sources claimed that he had died in 1995, but a 2009 investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) found that was still alive. Rohan also spoke to an ABC journalist a few years after the findings. 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". From the kibbutz he went to Jerusalem, staying in hotels. After reading a biblical passage in the Book of Zechariah: Behold the man whose name is the branch, for he shall grow up in his place and he shall build the Temple of the Lord. It is he who shall build the