The father and son duo suspected of carrying out a massacre at Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach on Sunday were “driven by Islamic state ideology,” police say, as Philippines authorities confirmed the pair recently traveled to a part of that country which has long been a hotbed of extremism.
‘These guys had come well prepared, and well planned.’
Counter-terrorism expert Will Geddes analyses the Bondi beach attack, as it is reported the gunmen who carried out the attack were ‘inspired by Isis’ and had ‘planned it proficiently.’ pic.twitter.com/htEwArJuLY
— GB News (@GBNEWS) December 16, 2025
The two men are 50-year-old Sajid Akram, who was killed exchanging gunfire with police; and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram, who is in custody at the hospital and is expected to face significant charges.
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Australian counterterrorism official believe the pair underwent military-style training while in the southern Philippines last month, public broadcaster ABC reported on Tuesday.
Two homemade Islamic State flags were found in a vehicle registered to the younger suspect, who was previously assessed by the country’s domestic security agency and deemed not to be a threat, police said.
Authorities say the gunmen targeted Jewish Australians celebrating the first night of the festival Hanukkah. The attack, which killed 15 people, is in the country’s worst mass shooting in almost 30 years.
There is currently no evidence to suggest there were any more individuals involved, police said.
Here’s what we know so far about the suspects.
What were their motives?
The shooting appears to have been inspired by extremist “Islamic State ideology,” according to Australian leader Anthony Albanese.
New South Wales police said on Tuesday that the vehicle registered to the younger suspect contained improvised explosive devices – and two homemade ISIS flags.
Albanese said the evidence of the flags showed that the “radical perversion of Islam is absolutely a problem” both in the country and around the globe.
Authorities believe the two men “weren’t part of a wider cell,” helping them to evade detection, Albanese told public broadcaster ABC.
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But the younger suspect was previously known to federal security services.
The son was investigated for six months by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in 2019 “because of his connections with two people who subsequently … went to jail,” Albanese said. But that investigation concluded there was “no evidence” he had been radicalized.
The 24-year-old was not subject to ongoing monitoring after the probe ended, but authorities are now investigating “whether he was radicalized further after that,” Albanese said.
The father, a licensed gun owner, was interviewed as part of that 2019 investigation, but also showed “no indication of any radicalization,” Albanese added. He said he did not know if authorities questioned whether the father possessed weapons at the time.
“Antisemitism, of course, has been around for a very long period of time – that’s the point. Islamic State is an ideology that, tragically, over the last decade, particularly since 2015, has led to a radicalization of some people to this extreme position, and it is a hateful action,” Albanese said.
An imam who provided Quran lessons to Naveed Akram told CNN the 24-year-old had approached the Al Murad Institute for lessons on Quran recitation and Arabic language in 2019. He continued his lessons for a year.