By Tim Swanston and Haidarr Jones, ABC<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nImmigration photos of Naveed (left) and Sajid Akram as they arrived in Manila on 1 November.
\nPhoto: ABC\n<\/p>\n
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
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 5000 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
<\/p>\n
\nMilitary personnel passing near the GV Hotel.
\nPhoto: ABC\/Haidarr Jones\n<\/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 1 November and left on 28 November.<\/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 1 November.<\/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
<\/p>\n
\nThe ABC spoke to a staff member from GV Hotel in Davao.
\nPhoto: ABC\/Haidarr Jones\n<\/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 AUD$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
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
CCTV vision obtained by the ABC from a store nearby shows a man 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
<\/p>\n
\nPlain-clothed Philippines police getting CCTV footage copied.
\nPhoto: ABC\/Haidarr Jones\n<\/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.<\/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
<\/p>\n
\nThe GV Hotel is in downtown Davao, near the city hall and the police station.
\nPhoto: ABC\/Haidarr Jones\n<\/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
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
– ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Tim Swanston and Haidarr Jones, ABC Immigration photos of Naveed (left) and Sajid Akram as they arrived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[48,138,47,246,111,43,139,69,244,245,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-195601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-personalfinance","18":"tag-podcasts","19":"tag-public-radio","20":"tag-radio-new-zealand","21":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}