Bondi shooters went ‘dark to stay off the radar’: ASIO
Australia’s spy chief said his agency would be held to blame for any fault following Bondi’s anti-Semitic terror attack, as an external investigation revealed it had cleared ASIO’s review of one of the 2019 gunmen.
Naveed Akram and his father Sajid killed 15 innocent people and injured dozens more in a shooting massacre at Bondi Beach during the Jewish Hanukkah festival in December.
Law enforcement agencies claim to be inspired by ISIS ideology.
At that time, the father was shot and killed by the police, while the son was facing terrorism and murder charges.
ASIO chief executive Mike Burgess said ASIO and its law enforcement partners had foiled 28 major terror plots since September 2014, but Australian intelligence agencies had failed to catch everything.
He said the attack took a heavy toll on him and his officers, but that didn’t mean intelligence was ignored or people made mistakes.
Mr Burgess told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday night: “The harsh truth is, as I have said many times, that ASIO is not all-seeing and all-knowing; we cannot stop every terrorist any more than we can catch every spy.”
“The alleged terrorists appear to have demonstrated a high level of security awareness to conceal their plans. Simply put, they went under cover of darkness to stay off the radar.”
“If ASIO is found to have made mistakes, we will own them and learn from them.”
The director general said an outside investigator had “unrestricted and unfiltered access” to the agency to examine whether there were any intelligence gaps.
It comes after teenager Akram came onto ASIO’s radar in 2019 due to his relationships with others, although at the time the teenager was not thought to pose any ongoing threat.
Mr Burgess said the highly confidential review into his agency following the Bondi attack reaffirmed ASIO’s actions in 2019.
“I would say we stand by our 2019 assessment that Akrams were not committed to or had no intention of engaging in violent extremism at that time,” he said.
“In other words, many of the allegations and criticisms made about ASIO’s handling of the case are unfounded.”
In public comments following the ABC Four Corners program broadcast on Monday, a former ASIO agent claimed he had shared intelligence about Naveed’s radicalization in 2019 with the agency.
ASIO said it investigated the information but was unable to substantiate it.
The intelligence agency also rejected accusations that the former agent failed to act on his intelligence, saying his comments to the ABC were untrue because he attributed to Naveed things said and done by another person.
Mr Burgess also warned against looking back.
“Things that seem obvious in retrospect may not have been obvious at the time, and when individuals make decisions in one context, it may not be fair to judge them in a different context,” he told senators at Tuesday’s hearing.
“In the days and weeks after the Bondi attack, assumptions, allegations, hypotheses and opinions were quickly accepted as fact by some.
“It was recycled and exaggerated over the following weeks. This resulted in calls to action that were not supported by any facts.”
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