{"id":363064,"date":"2025-12-21T19:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/363064\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T19:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:25:12","slug":"what-we-do-and-dont-know-about-the-bondi-gunmens-month-in-the-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/363064\/","title":{"rendered":"What we do \u2014 and don’t \u2014 know about the Bondi gunmen’s month in the Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bomb squad sweeps, police combing through CCTV and a city in a state of concern.<\/p>\n

You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a description of what’s taking place in Sydney following the deadliest alleged terror attack in Australian history.<\/p>\n

But it’s not. The long shadow of the Bondi shooting that killed 15 people has also darkened the coastal southern Philippines, causing deep confusion and stoking long-held anxieties over terrorist groups in the region.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the shooting, it was revealed that Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, went to Davao on the island of Mindanao for almost a month.<\/p>\n

Read more on the Bondi Beach shooting:<\/p>\n

They left the Philippines just over two weeks before the shooting at a Hanukkah event in Bondi, killing 15 people.<\/p>\n

A flurry of police and military activity is now taking place in Davao, more than 5,000 kilometres away from the site of the shooting.<\/p>\n

It’s a region that has long struggled with Islamic extremism, with several groups pledging allegiance to Islamic State in 2014.<\/p>\n

Earlier last week, a senior counter-terrorism official told the ABC they were investigating whether the pair allegedly underwent training while in the Philippines.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Military personnel passing near the GV Hotel. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)<\/p>\n

Some analysts speculated that the pair could have met with militants while in the city of Davao.<\/p>\n

As police from both countries continue to investigate what the pair did in Mindanao, here’s what we do and don’t know.<\/p>\n

Room 315<\/p>\n

The Philippines Bureau of Immigration has confirmed that Sajid and Naveed Akram arrived in the country on November 1 and left on November 28.<\/p>\n

According to officials they had never been to the country before.<\/p>\n

An immigration spokesperson confirmed photos of the pair that had been taken at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport on November 1.<\/p>\n

Staff at a budget accommodation in Davao, GV Hotel, told the ABC that the pair then stayed there for four weeks.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The ABC spoke to a staff member from GV Hotel in Davao. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)<\/p>\n

The ABC has seen hotel computer logs that show the check-in and check-out times, along with weekly payments of cash for the room.<\/p>\n

The room costs $24, or 930 pesos, per night.<\/p>\n

According to hotel staff they stayed in room 315, a small, basic room with two single beds.<\/p>\n

They also arrived with a large bag and didn’t provide ID or a passport.<\/p>\n

Staff said that they generally stayed holed up in their room, leaving to go out for about an hour or so once a day, and departing on foot.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

A staff member described the pair as not suspicious, but as unapproachable, and not talkative with hotel staff.<\/p>\n

Staff said nothing out of the ordinary was found in the room after they left.<\/p>\n

The CCTV sighting<\/p>\n

Staff at GV Hotel said their CCTV was on a weekly loop, so any video of the two men would have already been overwritten.<\/p>\n

Man resembling Naveed Akram caught on Philippines CCTV in November<\/a><\/p>\n

A man resembling Bondi gunman Naveed Akram was caught on CCTV in Davao City in mid-November.<\/p>\n

CCTV vision obtained by the ABC from a store nearby shows a man<\/a> that the hotel staff then identified as Naveed Akram.<\/p>\n

The man appears to be walking in a direction away from the hotel at about 5am, looking at his phone, before he goes out of frame.<\/p>\n

When asked if it was normal for Naveed Akram to leave the hotel at this time, staff were unsure.<\/p>\n

They said their front desk is casually monitored by a worker on the graveyard shift.<\/p>\n

The day the ABC published the CCTV vision, Philippine police were going into stores near the hotel to copy their footage.<\/p>\n

Out of concern over an investigation by authorities, store owners in the area who had CCTV vision from November were unwilling to provide it to the ABC.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Plain-clothed Philippines police getting CCTV footage copied. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)<\/p>\n

In a recorded statement issued on Sunday, Police Brigadier General Victor Rosete said multiple agencies were still investigating the month-long stay by Sajid and Naveed Akram.<\/p>\n

“[We] have immediately conducted backtracking operations, to establish their movements during their stay,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This included a review of CCTV, hotel records, travel data and other available information.<\/p>\n

“We are also examining any activities they may have conducted during their stay.”<\/p>\n

He said they were also identifying individuals the two men interacted with, and identifying possible links and support networks.<\/p>\n

Police will also reportedly investigate why the pair paid for one week at the hotel, then extended weekly for a month.<\/p>\n

A police spokesperson said they were also investigating a visit Sajid Akram allegedly made to a firearms store in Davao.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why Mindanao?<\/p>\n

This last week has firmly put Davao back into the public spotlight, a city that has received its fair share of attention.<\/p>\n

The city’s mayor is former president Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently before the International Criminal Court, accused by the ICC of crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

The region of Mindanao, which encompasses Davao, has long struggled with Islamic extremism.<\/p>\n

Several groups, like Abu Sayyaf and Islamic State East Asia, have pledged allegiance to Islamic State.<\/p>\n

Militants captured the city of Marawi in 2017, with Philippines Armed Forces recapturing it five months later after a bloody conflict.<\/p>\n

Since then the military has been working to defeat the remnants of cells, but acknowledges that some fighters do remain in the provinces of Gamindanau and Lanao del Sur.<\/p>\n

These groups have had access to training camps, but many analysts believe the remaining militants do not have the capacity to conduct extensive training of fighters.<\/p>\n

Political analyst Edmund Tayao said the size of the remaining IS-aligned groups meant that members could perhaps have travelled to Davao.<\/p>\n

“Very small groups means that they can easily move from one area to another,” Mr Tayao said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not impossible for the Bondi attackers to have met with any of the ISIS groups.<\/p>\n

“We need to find out whether they have met with any of these groups and what was the reason?”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The GV Hotel is in downtown Davao, near the city hall and the police station. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)<\/p>\n

In a statement this week, Philippines National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano said there had been “no recorded terrorist training activities or significant operations by these ISIS-affiliated groups since 2017.”<\/p>\n

The mood in the city<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week, shortly after news had broken that the pair had been in Davao, local media were bursting with questions over the safety of their city.<\/p>\n

A press conference with regional and city police was dominated by questions over security, knowing that just weeks before the Bondi attack the pair were in Davao.<\/p>\n

\"Vehicles<\/p>\n

Davao is in the southern Philippines region of Mindanao, which has been known as a hotbed for Islamic extremism. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)<\/p>\n

Just under a decade ago, Davao was rocked by the bombing of a night market, killing 15 people.<\/p>\n

Several members of an Islamic State-aligned group were prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Davao police were on the front foot on Wednesday, reassuring the public that the city was safe, especially ahead of Christmas.<\/p>\n

But on that day, Davao police didn’t want to publicly confirm that Sajid and Naveed Akram had been to the city, stating that they were still investigating.<\/p>\n

Investigators are still piecing together a timeline of the Akrams’ mysterious trip to the Philippines, as they try to understand why they came to the coastal Philippines just before carrying out the attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bomb squad sweeps, police combing through CCTV and a city in a state of concern. You’d be forgiven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[79253,64,63,27931,99,194886,186,197559,32723,197560,197558,184,185,277,195320,4905],"class_list":["post-363064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-akram","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bondi","tag-business","tag-davao","tag-finance","tag-gv-hotel","tag-islamic-state","tag-mindanao","tag-naveed","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-philippines","tag-sajid","tag-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}