Bondi shooting: One of the alleged gunman visited gun shop during Philippines stay, police say
One of the two alleged Bondi Beach shooters visited a gun store while they were staying in the Philippines and they were trying to track the duo’s movements, police said on Saturday.
An Australian counterterrorism team is investigating whether Sajid Akram and his son Naveed met with Islamic extremists during a nearly month-long visit to the southern island of Mindanao before the mass shooting in Sydney that killed 15 people six days ago.
Staff at the GV Hotel in Davao City told AFP that the two men remained holed up in their small room for most of their 28-day stay, leaving only briefly each morning.
“What we saw was one of them visiting a gun shop,” Davao regional police spokeswoman Catherine Dela Rey said on Saturday, adding that the person seen later was 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
“We are continuing to review CCTV so we can see other places they have visited and people they may have spoken to,” he said.
Although little has been made public at this stage of the investigation, National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano told reporters on Friday that there was “no way” the men left the city to train.
“They would go out and come back two or three hours later, the longest was eight hours, but still… that time period wouldn’t be enough for them to get out of Davao,” he said.
Police said their investigation also revealed that neither man had visited any of the city’s seven gun ranges.
President Ferdinand Marcos criticized media reports that he said had misleadingly depicted the Philippines as a “training center for terrorism.”
“For years we have acted decisively to dismantle terrorist networks, secure communities and maintain our hard-won peace,” he said in a speech celebrating the 90th anniversary of the country’s armed forces on Friday.
“It is unacceptable for these gains to be ignored with unfounded speculation.”
The Philippine military said the number of jihadists remaining in Mindanao is now just over 50, down from 1,257 in 2016.
