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,[1] inflamed tensions across the Muslim world and triggered the most high-level crisis in the Middle East since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.

[2][3] 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.

[6][7][8] 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, [sic] 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.

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.

[10] 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.