Bondi shooting puts gunmen’s Philippines trip under scrutiny, but training claims remain unproven

MANILA/SINGAPORE/SYDNEY – When Australian investigators disclosed that the perpetrators of the Bondi Beach shooting had spent nearly a month in the Philippines weeks before their attack, attention quickly turned to Mindanao, the country’s main island in the south, which has a long association with Islamist militancy.

The father-son duo, Sajid and Naveed Akram, stayed in Davao City in Mindanao from Nov 1 to 28 before returning to Sydney, where they allegedly carried out the

Dec 14 mass shooting that

killed at least 15 people and injured dozens.

Their trip to the southern Philippines has since emerged as a focal point for investigators seeking to determine whether it had any operational relevance to the attack. Although nearly a week has passed since the attack, only limited information regarding the gunmen’s trip has emerged.

Philippine police investigations into the duo’s stay in Davao have so far yielded little to support claims of militant training.

Hotel staff interviewed by local news organisation Minda News said the two stayed in the same room in a downtown hotel throughout their visit, rarely leaving for more than an hour at a time. They were not seen receiving visitors, taking vehicles or interacting with other guests, and left behind no documents or materials when they checked out. Police later inspected the room but found nothing of note.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has rejected claims that the South-east Asian nation was a training ground for the attackers.

“The President strongly rejects the sweeping statement and the misleading characterisation of the Philippines as the ISIS training hot spot,” said Mr Marcos’ spokeswoman Claire Castro on Dec 17.

National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano also said in a separate media statement that there was “no indicator or any information that they underwent training” in Mindanao, adding that “a mere visit does not support allegations of terrorist training”.

Philippine armed forces chief, General Romeo Brawner, echoed that assessment, saying the number of ISIS-linked militants in the country was down to about 50 and “that’s why we cannot see the credibility of reports that the gunmen underwent training here”.

Nearly a week ago, the

Bondi Beach shooting suspects

had targeted a crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered on the famous Sydney beach to celebrate the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. It was the worst terrorist violence in Australia in decades.

The attack has renewed concerns about terrorist violence and challenged assumptions about the nature of the terrorist threat in Australia, the region and beyond.

Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead at the scene, and his 24-year-old son Naveed remains hospitalised under police guard. It is believed the two were

influenced by the terrorist group ISIS.

The son, who was born in Australia, was investigated for six months by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in 2019 for alleged ISIS links, but he was not deemed a threat at the time.

The father, who migrated from Hyderabad, India, in 1998, had no known extremist links. National security expert Greg Barton of Deakin University told The Straits Times that Sajid may have been radicalised by his son, while Indian authorities say there was no evidence he was radicalised before arriving in Australia.

Mindanao’s links to Al-Qaeda, ISIS

The father and son’s trip to Mindanao – a former hot spot for Al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked groups – a month before their attack has made some observers sceptical that it was a mere coincidence.

Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines, has long been beset by terrorism and unrest.

Islamist militants have operated in the southern Philippines for decades, at times attracting foreign fighters and forging ties with transnational extremist movements.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, home-grown militants from the Abu Sayyaf Group developed links with Al-Qaeda, while later factions aligned themselves with ISIS. This culminated in a months-long siege of Marawi – the country’s largest Muslim-majority city, about 350km north-west of Davao City – in 2017.

The Marawi siege displaced more than 350,000 people and it was the worst affected region due to ISIS-linked militancy in South-east Asia. In the aftermath, Philippine authorities, with international support, launched sustained military operations, enacted tougher counter-terrorism laws and pursued peace agreements aimed at weakening extremist networks. Attempts to address long-running grievances tied to marginalisation, underdevelopment and governance failures in Mindanao have yielded some progress, although significant challenges remain.

The ASIO has previously assessed that ISIS-linked networks in the Philippines have exploited long-standing economic and social vulnerabilities, particularly in parts of central Mindanao where poverty, displacement and weak local governance have historically made recruitment easier.

Veteran Philippine journalist Carmela Fonbuena, who has covered Mindanao security for years, told ST that the Bondi Beach case illustrates how quickly older threat narratives resurface after major attacks. “Everybody jumped into the fact that they made a trip to the Philippines,” she said, even though initial confirmed information amounted largely to immigration data.

According to Ms Fonbuena, what happened in Bondi Beach did not require military-style training, and she called for caution against such assumptions. “That’s plain violence,” she said. “What kind of training would you need for that kind of attack?”

She also warned that ISIS today operates less as a centrally directed organisation and more as a loose brand, complicating efforts to distinguish between directed, inspired or opportunistically claimed attacks.

That assessment is broadly shared by terrorism expert Kenneth Yeo of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, who told ST that the terrorism landscape in the Philippines has reduced significantly since the 2017 Marawi siege.

Manila has since made substantial progress in weakening and fragmenting major terrorist groups, though residual threats remain. Mr Yeo noted the mass surrenders of rebels in the southern Philippines and what he described as “collective demoralisation” of militant groups such as Abu Sayyaf, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and Dawlah Islamiyah.

“The Australian police explained that the father-son duo’s activity in Davao is still a matter of investigation. I believe allegations that Mindanao is a terrorist training ground are based on the conditions in the late 1990s,” he said.

Seeds of insurgency remain

Not all analysts, however, agree that militant infrastructure in the south has been fundamentally dismantled.

Dr Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said that while there is no evidence yet that the Bondi Beach attackers or others were trained in the Philippines, militant training camps in the region have not disappeared altogether.

“Existing militant groups create a conducive environment for training activities that has attracted foreign fighters for decades, since the Al-Qaeda era,” Dr Banlaoi told ST. “Davao (serves) as (a) logistical and planning hub for foreign terrorist fighters”, he said, while acknowledging Philippine military officials’ statements that a 30-day visit to the Philippines was “insufficient for meaningful marksmanship training”.

Dr Banlaoi suggested that the father-and-son duo may have received training elsewhere in Asia but said he was not at liberty to provide details. The Philippine authorities have not corroborated those claims for now.

Mr Yeo cautioned that while challenges persist, including the slow rehabilitation process in Marawi eight years after the siege, there remains “no popular legitimacy” for militant groups among displaced communities.

For Ms Fonbuena, the larger risk lies in how violence is framed. She said over-securitising communities that have changed since Marawi risks deepening mistrust and weakening intelligence, while poor communication between the authorities and local communities has repeatedly undermined early threat detection.

The Bondi Beach incident has created a dilemma for intelligence agencies in the Philippines and Australia. For Australian investigators, the Akrams’ trip to the south Philippines has made it harder to piece together their activities and motivations in the lead up to the attack.

However, as Philippine authorities have noted, militant activity in the south has significantly declined in recent years. Manila’s strong pushback against claims that the Bondi Beach suspects trained in the country’s south follows years of effort to redeem Mindanao’s image as a regional hotbed for terrorism.