A man looks at floral tributes left by mourners at the promenade of Bondi Beach in Sydney on Wednesday.DAVID GRAY/AFP/Getty Images
The surviving suspect who allegedly carried out Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades was charged with 59 offences on Wednesday, including terrorism and 15 counts of murder.
Naveed Akram, 24, remains in hospital after he was shot by police during an attack on a Jewish gathering at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday. The authorities had waited to charge him until he was out of a coma and had “appropriate cognitive ability” to understand what was happening, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters.
In a statement, the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team alleged Mr. Akram “engaged in conduct that caused death, serious injury, and endangered life to advance a religious cause and cause fear in the community.”
Police say the alleged gunmen who opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney's Bondi Beach had traveled to Mindanao in the Philippines last month, as investigators probe ties to extremist networks.
Reuters
“Early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by ISIS,” the statement said, adding that Mr. Akram remains in hospital under police guard.
On Tuesday, it emerged that Mr. Akram and his father – 50-year-old Sajid Akram, who was killed during the attack – spent most of November in the Philippines, where they are believed to have connected with a web of militant organizations linked to ISIS, also known as the Islamic State.
According to the immigration bureau in the Philippines, the two men flew into Davao, the capital of the southern island of Mindanao, on Nov. 1, and departed from there for Sydney on Nov. 28.
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Major Catherine Dela Ray, a police spokeswoman in Davao, said the two men did not stay in the city, but travelled elsewhere on the island. A comprehensive investigation has been launched, she added, looking into who they met with and where they stayed.
For decades, Mindanao was the base of Abu Sayyaf, a deadly terrorist group that, in 2014, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and tried to set up a caliphate in the Philippines.
In March, 2024, after a five-year “all-out war” against the group, including the months-long bloody siege of Marawi, which had been seized by militants, the Philippines declared Abu Sayyaf had been “dismantled,” with all but a handful of its leaders “neutralized.”
Family grieve over the coffin at the Chabad of Bondi Synagogue during the funeral of Rabbi Eli Schlanger on Wednesday.MICK TSIKAS/Reuters
In a Wednesday statement, the Armed Forces of the Philippines said there were only an estimated 50 fighters with various terrorist groups operating in Mindanao, down from more than 1,200 in 2016.
The AFP listed 10 top militant commanders killed in the past decade, including Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, and said it “continues to record significant improvements in its domestic security situation, particularly in areas of Mindanao previously affected by terrorism.”
Independent terrorism experts have cast doubt on that assessment, estimating there may still be hundreds of Islamic State-linked fighters operating in the Philippines, along with associated radical preachers and mosques that the authorities have struggled to crack down on.
Mourners escort the coffin of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed during a shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sunday.Jeremy Piper/Reuters
Last year, Australia’s National Security agency warned in a report that Abu Sayyaf was “rebuilding its membership and influence in local communities, while continuing a low-level insurgency against Philippine security forces.” Other Islamist militant groups also continue to operate in Mindanao, the report said.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., through a spokesperson, said Wednesday he “strongly rejects” any characterization of Mindanao or the Philippines as a “training hot spot” for the Islamic State.
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In a statement, the country’s National Security Council said: “Currently, there is no validated report or confirmation that the individuals involved in the Bondi Beach incident received any form of training in the Philippines.”
Drieza Lininding, who runs a civil society organization based in Marawi, said the security situation in the city has transformed in recent years, and it is now “one of the safest places in Mindanao.”
“ISIS were defeated and eliminated in 2017,” she said. “There are some remnants, according to the military, but we can count them on our fingers and those remaining are in hiding.”
While the Islamic State’s footprint in the country has been vastly reduced, Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Manila-based Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said it was likely the Akrams were able to connect with figures linked to armed groups in Mindanao. He expressed concern their case “can provide a template for others to follow.”
“We are now facing a new wave of terrorism about 25 years after 9/11,” he said, adding that this was driven by “an antisemitic, anti-Jewish agenda as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza.”
Despite its defeat in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State “remains a resilient and evolving global threat,” the United Nations warned in August, adding that the group continues to carry out attacks in multiple countries and is radicalizing potential recruits online.
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Naveed Akram, who was born and raised in Australia, has been linked to groups in Sydney long accused of spreading Islamic State propaganda and ideology, including one led by preacher Wisam Haddad, who earlier this year lost a court case alleging he spread hate speech against Jews.
In a statement to The Globe and Mail, Mr. Haddad said no evidence had been produced “showing any personal, organizational, or instructional link between” himself and Mr. Akram.
“Wisam Haddad has never been charged, tried, or convicted of ISIS membership, leadership, or support,” he said, adding that claims about his alleged extremism “rely on conflation, misidentification, vague terminology, and unsubstantiated, racially discriminatory assertions.”
Two gunmen opened fire during a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's Bondi beach, killing 15 people, including a child, officials said Monday, in what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an act of antisemitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.
The Associated Press