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Hours after 15 people were killed around a Jewish Hanukkah festival at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, more and more information about the two gunmen has emerged.
According to police, the shooters were 50-year old fruit shop owner Sajid Akram, who died in a shootout with law enforcement, and his 24-year old son Naveed, an umemployed bricklayer, who was severely injured and taken to a hospital where he remained in critical but stable condition under police guard.
The older Akram had arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, then became a permanent resident in 2001 and later obtained a Resident Return Visa (RRV). This document allowed him to travel overseas and re-enter Australia while keeping his permanent resident status.
His son was born in Australia and is a citizen.
Australian media reports said the father hailed from Pakistan, although this has not been confirmed yet by the authorities.
The men had reportedly pledged allegiance to the radical Islamic State (IS) and flags of the terrorist group were found in their car where police also discovered at least two improvised explosive devices.
They told family members they were traveling to the coast for a longer fishing trip.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the gunmen were acting alone and not part of a wider extremist cell.
“There’s no evidence of collusion,” he said, but they were “clearly motivated by extremist ideology.”
Older gunman had a gun license – hard to obtain in Australia
The older Akram had been a licensed firearm holder since 2015 for recreational hunting and was a member of a gun club.
This license entitled him “to have the long arms he had,” the New South Wales Police Commissioner told reporters.
In order to obtain a license, the prospective license holder needs to undergo “a thorough examination” to ensure an individual is “fit and proper”, he added.
Sajid Akram was licensed to own six firearms, all of which police believe were used in the attack.
According to sources inside Australia’s counterterrorism community, the country’s domestic intelligence agency ASIO took an interest in Naveed Akram six years ago after police foiled plans for an IS terrorist attack.
The sources said Naveed Akram was closely connected to a man now serving jail time for planning the 2019 attack as the self-declared Australian commander of the terrorist group.
Prime Minister Albanese confirmed the younger Akram first came to authorities’ attention in October 2019, but after a six-month investigation an “assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat of him engaging in violence” – in other words, there was nothing to charge him with.
Furthermore, the younger Akram studied for one year at Al Murad Institute in Western Sydney, which has strongly condemned the attack.
“Naveed approached the centre in late 2019 seeking Koran recitation and Arabic language classes,” the Institute’s founder said in a video statement.
“What I find completely ironic is that the very Koran he was learning to recite clearly states that taking one innocent life is like killing all of humanity,” he added.
Police believe the gunmen had prepared for the attack at a short-term rental property around a 30-minute drive from Bondi Beach. There, the two gunmen had been staying for the last two weeks.
This building is now an intense focus of the investigation. In addition, police raided the gunmen’s family home on Monday night, around an hour’s drive away.