Sydney residents Sajid Akram, 50, and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram spent most of November in Davao City in the southern Philippines, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said.
They returned on a flight from Manila on Nov. 29. Two weeks later, they are accused of killing 15 and wounding another 40 in a mass shooting that targeted a Hannukah festival at Bondi Beach.
Police allege the pair were inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group. The southern Philippines once drew small numbers of foreign terrorists alligned with the Islamic State terrorist group or al-Qaida to train in a secessionist conflict involving minority Muslims in the largely Catholic nation.
Naveed Akram has yet to enter pleas to dozens of charges including 15 counts of murder and one of committing a terrorist act. Police shot him in the abdomen during a gunfight at Bondi on Dec. 14 and he spent a week in a hospital before he was transferred to a prison. Police shot his father dead at Bondi.
The first police responders to the Bondi massacre were armed with Glock pistols that lacked the lethal range of the Akrams’ rifles and shotguns. Two police officers were among the wounded.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the state was not moving toward a more militarized police force in response to the attack.
“Given we’ve just had the worst terrorism event in Australia’s history inside the last month, it would be self-evidently the case that things need to change and the security needs to change,” Minns said.
“I understand that there’ll be some people that oppose this or regard it as the militarization of the police. My sense is far more families would fully support that kind of police operation because they will feel far safer in that environment,” Minns added.
