A father and son who lived in a quiet Sydney suburb — one a licensed gun owner, the other previously investigated for potential extremist associations — are suspected of turning an oceanside Hanukkah celebration into a killing ground.
With 15 people confirmed dead, Sunday’s attack on the iconic Bondi Beach is Australia’s deadliest shooting in decades. Officials said the shooters targeted the Jewish community and were “clearly” motivated by extremist ideology when they unleashed a volley of bullets from a bridge at the gathered crowds.
Officers fatally shot the 50-year-old father at the scene, while the 24-year-old son “suffered critical injuries” and was hospitalized, police said.
The attack has set off renewed scrutiny of Australian gun laws and efforts to combat antisemitism, but also what authorities knew about the duo who carried out the attack.
Three senior law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Australia told NBC News that one of the suspects had been tentatively identified by investigators as Naveed Akram. Australia’s National Broadcaster, ABC, named the suspects as Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram, citing police.
The younger suspect was an Australian-born citizen who first came to the attention of the Australian intelligence agency in October 2019, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters Monday.
“He was examined on the basis of being associated with others,” he said. However, “an assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence,” he added.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the older suspect arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa and transferred to a partner visa three years later. He has since held a resident return visa. Neither Albanese nor Burke elaborated on the son’s associations, though Albanese said the investigation at the time lasted six months.
In an interview later Monday with ABC Australia, Albanese said there was “no evidence of collusion” or that the father and son were part of a wider cell, though he said they were “clearly” motivated by extremist ideology.
He confirmed police that a number of improvised explosive devices were found in a car. Albanese also said the younger suspect was not on a counterterrorism watchlist.
The attack has sent shockwaves through Australia and across the world.
Police raided an Airbnb property in Campsie, close to Bondi Beach, where the men had been staying, according to ABC Australia.
Authorities also said they raided a property in Bonnyrigg, a working-class suburb about 22 miles from Sydney’s central business district.
Residents said they were stunned to see armed police cordon off their street and raid a house as news of the Bondi Beach shooting unfolded. Neighbors said the family who lived there kept to themselves and appeared no different from others in the area.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street, told the Reuters news agency. “People mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” she added. “They are normal people.”
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects, but said she was unable to identify her son based on images from the scene of the attack.
She said the the two men told her they were going on a fishing trip.
“He doesn’t have a firearm,” she said of her son, reported the Sydney Morning Herald. “Anyone would wish to have a son like my son.”
Discussing radicalization broadly, one expert told NBC News that family connections can be a significant potential risk factor in extremist involvement.
What family thinks “matters in a way that doesn’t necessarily apply for others,” said Andrew Silke, a professor of criminology at Royal Holloway University. He said that attacks by brothers were more common than by father and son.
Normally, Silke added, “the older family member is the one who introduces the younger family member to the ideology and kind of coaches them in, but there have been a few cases where the opposite has happened.”
Silke said that it often emerges in terror investigations that there was a pattern of radicalization over time. An attack completely out of the blue, with no evidence of engaging with more radical ideas, would be “incredibly rare,” he said.
“Normally, there are signs,” Silke added.
Sunday’s attack in Sydney has raised questions about Australia’s gun laws, after police confirmed the father was a legal firearms owner.
The 50-year-old suspect killed by police had the legal right to possess firearms, authorities said at a news conference in New South Wales.
“He met the eligibility criteria for a firearm’s license,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said. “The firearms license was to be for a recreational hunting license. There are two types of hunting license: the ability to hunt on a property or also as part of a hunting club — so a gun club. He was a member of a gun club and was entitled by nature of the firearms act to have a firearms license issued.”
The suspect had held a firearms license since 2015, Lanyon said, adding that it permitted him to own the registered long guns used in the attack.
The government is now considering measures including limiting the number of firearms held by one individual, restricting licenses to Australian citizens and narrowing the types of weapons deemed legal, officials said.
Lanyon promised Sunday that “no stone will be left unturned” as authorities continue to investigate.
Discussion about this post