{"id":300540,"date":"2026-02-16T07:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/300540\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T07:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:21:07","slug":"accused-bondi-gunman-naveed-akram-appears-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/300540\/","title":{"rendered":"Accused Bondi gunman Naveed Akram appears in court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Accused Bondi Beach gunman Naveed Akram has appeared in an Australian court via video link, in his first public hearing since the nation&#8217;s worst mass shooting in nearly three decades.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Akram and his father, Sajid, allegedly attacked a Hanukkah celebration in December. Sajid was shot and killed by police during the attack.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Akram has been charged with terrorism, 15 counts of murder, dozens of counts of causing wounds to a person with intent to kill and planting explosives.<\/p>\n<p>He appeared in a Sydney court for about five minutes via video link from prison, according to a statement from the court and local media.<\/p>\n<p>The timeline of evidence was also discussed, the court said.<\/p>\n<p>The hearing dealt mostly with technical matters such as suppressing the identification of some victims, local media said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Akram reportedly spoke only one word &#8211; &#8220;yeah&#8221; &#8211; when asked by the judge whether he had heard a discussion about the extension of suppression orders.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A sketch by artist Rocco Fazzari shows accused Bondi shooter Naveed Akram appearing via video\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0023e66f-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nNaveed Akram appeared in an Australian court via video link (Photo credit: Rocco Fazzari \/ AFP)<\/p>\n<p>Mr Akram will next appear in court on 9 March.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking outside the court, his lawyer Ben Archbold said his client was being held in &#8220;very onerous conditions&#8221;, national broadcaster ABC said.<\/p>\n<p>He also said it was too early to say whether Mr Akram would plead guilty.<\/p>\n<p>The mass shooting sparked national soul-searching about anti-Semitism, anger over the failure to shield Jewish Australians from harm and promises to stiffen gun laws.<\/p>\n<p>Among the victims of December&#8217;s attack were an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, a couple who confronted one of the gunmen and a 10-year-old girl<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Tactical&#8217; training <\/p>\n<p>Police and intelligence agencies are also facing difficult questions about whether they could have acted earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Naveed Akram was flagged by Australia&#8217;s intelligence agency in 2019, but he slipped off the radar after it decided that he posed no imminent threat.<\/p>\n<p>Police documents released following the attack said the father and son had carried out &#8220;firearms training&#8221; in what was believed to be the New South Wales countryside prior to the shooting.<\/p>\n<p>They said the suspects &#8220;meticulously planned&#8221; the attack for months, releasing pictures showing them firing shotguns and moving in what they described as a &#8220;tactical manner&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The pair also recorded a video in October railing against &#8220;zionists&#8221; while sitting in front of a flag of the so-called Islamic State jihadist group and detailing their motivations for the attack, police said.<\/p>\n<p>They had made a nighttime reconnaissance trip to Bondi Beach just days before the killings, documents showed.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks before the Bondi Beach attack, the pair returned to Sydney from a four-week trip to the southern Philippines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Accused Bondi Beach gunman Naveed Akram has appeared in an Australian court via video link, in his first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-300540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}