{"id":189455,"date":"2025-12-17T14:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/189455\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T14:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:21:07","slug":"pakistan-says-hostile-countries-behind-false-online-claims-linking-it-to-australia-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/189455\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan says \u2018hostile countries\u2019 behind false online claims linking it to Australia shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan\u2019s information minister said Wednesday that his country has been the victim of a coordinated online disinformation campaign following the mass shooting<\/a> at Australia\u2019s Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n

Attaullah Tarar accused \u201chostile countries,\u201d including India, of spreading false claims that one of the two attackers was a Pakistani national.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad, Tara said Pakistan’s leadership strongly condemned Sunday’s attack, which killed 15 people in an antisemitic shooting targeting Jews celebrating Hanukkah.<\/p>\n

The minister said misleading information began circulating almost immediately after the attack, with social media posts falsely identifying one of the suspects as a Pakistani national named Naveed Akram. He said the claims spread rapidly across digital platforms and were repeated by some media outlets without verification.<\/p>\n

Tarar said subsequent findings, including confirmation by Indian police, established that one of the attackers, Sajid Akram, was from India, while his 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram \u2014 who was also involved \u2014 was born in Australia.<\/p>\n

The minister said the misinformation appeared to stem from a case of mistaken identity, as a Pakistani man living in Sydney shares the same name as one of the two suspects.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we restore the situation to where it was before the Bondi Beach attack?\u201d Tarar asked, adding that the Pakistani man \u2014 also named Naveed Akram \u2014 had released a video denying any involvement and urging the public not to associate him with the attack.<\/p>\n

Tara said the Pakistani man was \u201ca victim of a malicious and organized campaign\u201d and that the disinformation effort originated in India.<\/p>\n

There was no immediate response from Indian officials.<\/p>\n

Tarar called on media outlets that published the false reports to issue apologies and said Pakistan had not yet decided whether to pursue legal action.<\/p>\n

Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed rivals<\/a>, have a long history of strained relations and have fought three wars since gaining independence from British rule in 1947, most of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The two sides came close to war in May before U.S. President Donald Trump brokered a ceasefire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ISLAMABAD — Pakistan\u2019s information minister said Wednesday that his country has been the victim of a coordinated online…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[108977,127,122,42,8122,43,238,3894,40,38,41,39,126],"class_list":["post-189455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-108977","tag-article","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-misinformation","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-shootings","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}