Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that the father and son suspects in the antisemitic terror attack on a Hanukkah gathering on Bondi Beach were inspired byISIS, as officials in India confirmed that the older man was originally from that nation.
Authorities also revealed that gunmen had recently returned from the Philippines, where they traveled to an area known as ahotbed for terrorist groups.
The mass shooting on the famous beachleft 15 innocent people dead, including a 10-year-old girl and an Holocaust survivor. The attack was "motivated by Islamic State ideology," Albanese said Tuesday as he visited one of the heroes who tried to stop the attackers.
Australia's federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett also said Tuesday that it was "a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State," referring to the now disparate group that, for several years, held a huge swathe of territory spanning the Syria-Iraq border.
The suspects, a father and son aged 50 and 24, usedguns that were owned legallyby the older man, whom officials in New South Wales state have named as Sajid Akram. He was shot dead at the scene, and his son was still being treated in a hospital on Tuesday, where Australian public broadcaster ABC said he had regained consciousness.
Indian police confirm father was from Hyderabad
Police in the southern Indian state of Telangana confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that Sajid Akram was originally from the city of Hyderabad. In a statement, the police said he earned a degree in Hyderabad before migrating to Australia in November 1998, where he married a woman of European origin.
Sajid Akram held an Indian passport, while his son Naveed and a daughter were both born in Australia and are citizens of the country, the police said, confirming previous statements by Australian officials about the son's nationality. U.S. officials had told CBS News soon after the attack that at least one of the Akrams was believed to be a Pakistani national, but that appears to have been a case of mistaken identity, and a man with the same name as the younger suspect has come forward in Sydney to say he was wrongly identified.
The Telangana police said the elder Akram had "limited contact with his family in Hyderabad over the past 27 years," visiting six times since he migrated to Australia, "primarily for family-related reasons."
The police statement said family members in India had "expressed no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalization, and that the son's apparent radicalization appeared "to have no connection with India."
Australian officials have confirmed that homemade ISIS flags were found — along with an improvised explosive device — in the suspects' vehicle at Bondi Beach on Sunday, and police provided new information on Tuesday about their recent movements.
Suspected gunmen spent most of November in the Philippines
Both men traveled to the Philippines in November, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters on Tuesday, adding that investigators were still looking into the reasons for the trip and where exactly the men went.The Philippines Bureau of Immigration said both Sajid Akram and his son, identified widely by Australian media as Naveed Akram, spent most of November — from the 1st until the 28th — in the Philippines, and listing the city of Davao as their final destination.
Muslim separatists,including the Islamist Abu Sayyaf groupthat once publicly backed ISIS, are active in that part of the southern Philippines. ABC, the Australian public broadcaster,saidthe men had undergone "military-style training" in the Philippines, citing security sources.
That group and others in the region have drawn and trained some foreign militants from across Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past, according to the Associated Press, though Abu Sayyaf has been weakened in recent years by repeated military offensives.
The AP cited Philippine military and police officials as saying there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants operating in the south of the country.
Did Australian officials fail the Jewish community?
Australian officials confirmed Monday that Naveed Akram was under investigation for about six months during 2019 for suspected links to a Sydney-based terror cell, though the nation's primary spy agency found he represented no threat, and officials said the probe had focused on associates.
Australia's ABC networkreportedthat his ties included "longstanding links" to members of a pro-ISIS cell in Australia, including contact with alleged jihadist spiritual leader Wisam Haddad and a man named Youssef Uweinat, who was convicted of recruiting young people in Australia to Islamic extremism.
A lawyer for Haddad has denied that the cleric had "any knowledge of or involvement in the shootings that took place at Bondi Beach," according to the network.
Many people, from thedaughter of one of the victims, to a former Australian leader, have told CBS News the men's history should have raised serious red flags, if not stopped them before they claimed so many lives.
Israeli officials have harshly criticized Australia's government for failing to protect Jewish people amid a sharp rise in recent years of antisemitic incidents.
"We are now facing here a surge of antisemitism, and Australians of Jewish faith are not feeling secure in their own country, and this is insane," Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon told CBS News on Tuesday, urging Australian leaders to create opportunities for young people of different faiths to come together, "and not once a year, but on a weekly basis."
Maimon also said "boundaries should be set" by Australian authorities, referring to pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been held in the country.
"I believe that it's very important to make sure that while the principle of freedom of expression should be kept, there should be also a limit to the language that some protesters, and in some protests, we hear," he said. "I always believe that there is room to do more. Always. I'm asking myself every day, 'what can I do better? How can I do better?' And I'm trying to do it. And I do expect the Australian government to do better."
Former Australian leader says there are no easy answers
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told CBS News on Tuesday that the national government undoubtedly had some very big questions to answer, but he stressed that intelligence gathering — for all nations — is an imperfect science.
"This type of terrorism has been, the elements of that, have been present in Australia for a long time, and our agencies spend a lot of time keeping an eye on them, but it's hard to track every single person," said Turnbull, who was Australian prime minister from 2015 to 2018.
"Certainly, it's a very big question: Why does somebody living in the suburbs of Sydney need six long arms, as he [Sajid Akram] had, even though they were licensed? Second question is, why were they licensed to a man who had a son who had been on an ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organization] watchlist because of links to ISIS-related entities? … And that trip to the Philippines raises another question: Why were they there? And so, you know, this gets back to the problem that I think we face all around the world, is databases talking to each other? Are we actually putting all the dots together in time?"
"There are holes in everybody's intelligence gathering," Turnbull said. "But as you know, the terrorist only has to be right once. The security agencies have to be right every time."
Regarding the sharp criticism levelled by many in the Jewish community, in particular, over perceived failings in detecting the threat posed by the suspects, and also in sufficiently protecting the pre-planned Jewish event on Bondi Beach, Turnbull said he wasn't sure how much more could have been done by his successor Albanese.
"I've been prime minister, right? And I'm on the opposite side of politics, so I'm not trying to be partisan about this, but I struggle to see what he could have done that was different. I mean there have been people saying he shouldn't have allowed pro-Palestine marches. Well, you know, we do have freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in Australia. I mean we have restrictions in Australia on speech, on hate speech, and on guns, in particular."
"When I ask people, they will say he should have condemned antisemitism more often. Well, I've never heard him do anything other than condemn it, but my question really is to say, what would difference would that have made? To those terrorists, you know, they're not going to listen to a lecture on the evils of antisemitism from you or me or Anthony Albanese."
"Remember, terrorism is a political act, right? So, you've got to try to interrupt people being radicalized, particularly young men, it's the most vulnerable group, and that involves monitoring what is being said online, what they're being taught, you know, in schools or in mosques or in other places. And the intelligence agencies are doing that all the time," he said.
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that the father and son suspects in the antisemitic terror attack...
