Bondi Beach gunmen trained with firearms together, police say

Melbourne, Australia — A man accused of killing 15 people on Sydney’s Bondi Beach received firearms training in the state of New South Wales, outside Sydney, along with his father, according to Australian police documents released Monday.

The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video appearance in court from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.

Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.

The state government confirmed that Naveed Akram was transferred from a hospital to a prison on Monday. Authorities did not identify any facilities.

The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating a annual Jewish event on Bondi Beachbut the devices did not explode, according to the documents.

Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” improvised explosive devices.

The couple had rented a room in Campsie, a Sydney suburb, for three weeks before leaving at 2.16am on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five improvised explosive devices and two homemade ISIS flags wrapped in blankets.

Police also released footage of the gunmen shooting from a pedestrian bridge, which gave them an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.

The largest explosive device was found after the shooting near the walkway in the trunk of his son’s car, which had been left covered with flags.

Authorities had been investigating a month-long trip between father and son. to the philippineswhere there has been a decades-long Islamist insurgency in the south of the country.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last week that the The attack was inspired by ISIS.and there is an ISIS-affiliated militant group operating in a remote area of ​​the Philippines.

But a hotel receptionist in Davao City told News themezone that the attackers never left her room for more than a day.

Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder injured survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.

The anti-Semitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was the worst mass shooting in Australia since a gunman killed 35 people in the state of Tasmania in 1996.

The New South Wales government on Monday introduced bills to Parliament that Premier Chris Minns said would be the toughest in Australia.

He new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms licence. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.

Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.

Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “his political and religious views and appears to summarize his justification for the Bondi terror attack”.

The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while also “adhering to a religiously motivated ideology linked to (ISIS),” police said.

Video recorded in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving tactically” in a meadow surrounded by trees, police said.

“There is evidence that the defendant and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.

A makeshift memorial erected near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed on Monday as the beach returned to more normal activity. The Jewish Museum of Sydney will preserve part of the monument.

victims’ funerals It continued on Monday with the service for French national Dan Elkayam held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, in the heart of Sydney Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.

The health department said 12 people injured in the attack remained in hospitals Monday.