5 days ago
7
A fixation with Israel’s war in Gaza is suspected by authorities to have served as a key motivation for Islamic State adherent turned Bondi Beach mass killer Sajid Akram.
State and federal police have also gathered information raising the prospect that Sajid played a significant role influencing his son, Naveed, to carry out the December attack that left 15 people dead, allegedly demanding his son engage in a strict no-communication policy to evade law enforcement detection.
This masthead can also reveal two separate classified inquiries have broadly concluded neither the federal police nor the nation’s spy agency acted negligently or failed to act on intelligence in a manner that could have prevented the Bondi attack, one of the worst attacks on Jews anywhere in the world in decades.
The inquiry assessing the Australian Federal Police was undertaken by former deputy commissioner Neil Gaughan, while Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s conduct was assessed by a former intelligence agency counter-terrorism expert.
But federal and state counter-terrorism agency insiders also acknowledge that the royal commission prompted by the Bondi attack has concluded that Australia’s counter-terror and antisemitism regimes can be hardened.
Before his resignation from the royal commission, sources said, ex-ASIO director Dennis Richardson expressed alarm about whether agencies, and governments more broadly, sufficiently responded when the terror threat level was raised by ASIO in 2024.
He also encouraged further scrutiny of ASIO’s 2019 assessment of Naveed.
Richardson’s observations could pave the way for firm questioning of intelligence agencies at the royal commission, which delivers an interim report next week.
The revelations about the shooters’ motivations and actions and the subsequent reviews are based on briefings from a dozen sources including investigators with deep knowledge of different aspects of Australia’s counter-terrorism regime or the alleged actions of Sajid and Naveed. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are unable to discuss the matters publicly.
Naveed is facing terror charges over the killings, while police shot Sajid dead during the attack. Naveed’s fate lies with the NSW justice system, but understanding his father’s motivation and path to terrorism have emerged as vital issues as counter-terror agencies and the royal commission examine Australia’s worst terror attack.
Security sources, including state and federal police, told this masthead that Sajid’s role in organising the attack was far greater than publicly acknowledged.
His motivation, they said, was suspected to be his growing Islamic State-influenced anger about Israel’s conduct of its war in Gaza, where more than 70,000 people have died, which it launched after the Hamas terrorist attack in October 2023.
Sajid was a religious fundamentalist or “hardliner” for years before a relatively rapid descent into violent Islamic extremism, and was absorbed by the Gaza conflict, one source said.
Another well-placed counter-terrorism official described Israel’s war in Gaza as a key motivator, while a third source aware of confidential assessments from state and federal agencies confirmed Sajid’s anger over Gaza, fused with the terrorist ideology of Islamic State, had contributed to the attack.
“He had views about Gaza,” this source said in reference to material gathered by state and federal agencies.
Court files say the pair recorded a video manifesto in October wearing black T-shirts and sitting in front of an image of an IS flag.
A source who had seen the video said Gaza was mentioned in the terrorists’ manifesto as part of their broader IS mission.
The court documents note only that the Akrams allegedly “condemn the acts of Zionists” in the video.
Gaza’s central role in the attack will probably fuel the political debate about the rise of antisemitism in Australia since 2023, and whether governments and state and federal agencies did enough to protect Australian Jews.
Islamic State has sought to exploit the Gaza conflict as an opportunity to regain momentum after the collapse of its caliphate.
The sources said Sajid designed the terror plot’s modus operandi enabling the Akrams to avoid the law enforcement radar.
Most significantly, under Sajid’s guidance, the pair studiously avoided phone and computer communications and avoided radical Islamic networks and prayer centres.
Single-man or two-man self-contained terror cells are the most difficult for authorities to investigate.
One source said Sajid was “very careful” to not use electronic communication that might be detected and was paranoid of surveillance.
Sources said that Sajid, in particular, was careful to avoid prayer groups known for being extremism hotbeds and avoid posting online.
Three sources said that Sajid’s cautious behaviour appeared to be based on his brief but alarming experiences with authorities in 2019.
At this time, Naveed came to the attention of counter-terror investigators due to his attendance at a radical Islamist prayer centre which also hosted several active Islamic State terrorists who were later charged, convicted and jailed.
A significant amount of media reporting and commentary after the Bondi terror attack has focused on Naveed’s interactions in 2019 with this radical prayer group.
Some reporting has also questioned whether police and ASIO erred – or suffered an “intelligence failure” – when, in 2019 and 2020, state and federal counter-terror officials separately assessed Naveed as not posing a terror threat requiring intensive ongoing investigation.
All but one of the official sources who briefed this masthead on condition of anonymity insisted these point-in-time assessments of the younger Akram were thorough and reasonable.
They also acknowledged that counter-terror systems could be enhanced, but dismissed suggestions that any one agency had bungled the historical assessments or been involved in an intelligence failure.
One source privy to classified joint-agency information about the attack said it did not point to any major “failure on the part of intel[igence] agencies”.
“That’s not to say there will not be learnings from this,” a senior police source said.
The father and son may have also evaded detection because they failed in their suspected attempts to connect with overseas extremist groups, and they only fully embraced Islamic State’s violent ideology in response to the more recent Gaza conflict.
Initial media reports that the pair received military-style training from extremists in the Philippines in 2024 are not supported by any evidence. Had the pair made it to a southern Philippines training camp when they travelled to the Asian nation in the months before the attack, it may have alerted local authorities or Five Eyes agencies.
“In the Philippines … suspicion is they were trying to make connections with radical groups or preachers to gain spiritual assent for the acts they were planning.” There were “thousands of hours” of footage showing the pair “just sitting in a room”, one source said.
Retrospective analysis has also raised questions about whether the pair’s other historical travel to Central Asia – possibly as part of a plan to enter Afghanistan – was adequately analysed.
The former ASIO counter-terror official who reviewed the agency’s conduct post the Bondi attack has endorsed ASIO’s assessment of Naveed Akram in 2019 that “he did not adhere to or intend to engage in violent extremism at that time”.
The AFP’s Gaughan review uncovered no information that the federal police failed in its handling of known intelligence when Akram first appeared on the radar of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Taskforce in Sydney.
In response to questions about these reviews and the activities of Sajid, the AFP declined to answer questions and instead stated: “The media inquiry suggests you may be privy to information not authorised for disclosure and I note the AFP has mandatory reporting obligations to relevant agencies and oversight bodies in relation to such matters.”
The federal police also flagged that this masthead’s proposed reporting as “extremely unhelpful” as it could “negatively impact” the royal commission and law enforcement investigations into the Bondi shooting.
The AFP did not respond when asked how this report could undermine the commission or police inquiries.
ASIO also declined to answer questions, saying in a statement it “would not be appropriate to comment while the Royal Commission is considering these matters”.
Prior to his resignation from the royal commission, Dennis Richardson appears to have taken a wider view of Australia’s counter-terrorism system than the agency reviews and flagged some concerns.
One, a source briefed on them said, was whether the 2019 and 2020 point-in-time conclusions of ASIO and NSW Police that Naveed did not pose a threat were overly relied upon and meant later potential data points – such as the pair’s travel to Central Asia – were not more thoroughly scrutinised as potential red flags.
The source said Richardson’s views were, on some matters, at odds with ASIO and the AFP. All sources agreed that the NSW gun licence system was deeply flawed, not least because it could not access all critical intelligence holdings or interact with Australia’s counter-terrorism regime.
Richardson, the source said, also queried whether enough resourcing and policy focus was applied across the joint national and state counter-terror regime after ASIO director general Mike Burgess raised the terrorism threat level to probable in 2024 and warned the “most likely attack” could involve one or a few people who rapidly radicalise into extremists and use “a rudimentary weapon such as a gun” to attack.
In February 2025, Burgess warned “antisemitism represented ASIO’s top priority in terms of threats to life”.
Among the sources who briefed this masthead, there were mixed views on the adequacy of resourcing, policy settings and whether surges in counter-terror police activity and intelligence gathering were sufficient.
The amount the government spends on fighting terrorism is intentionally vague, but one segment of the budget made public, included in a fresh strategy on countering extremism released last year, showed funding growing to nearly $80 million over three years, up from $45 million.
One senior police source said that while there had been a substantial lift in federal and state police activity and monitoring of persons of interest when the Gaza conflict erupted, it had subsided as the months passed and authorities found no indication of an attack. A second source with years of experience in counter-terrorism defended the funding as appropriate.
A third source said Richardson, while identifying no blatant intelligence failure, had privately encouraged the royal commission to examine resourcing of counter-Islamic extremism efforts from various agencies.
The source said “the long and the short” of it was opinion was divided on counter-terrorism resourcing adequacy and the royal commission would need to closely examine the issue.
The source said that after Burgess’ dire warnings, the federal and state counter-terrorism settings may not have been adequately changed, meaning “eyes were taken off the ball”. ASIO has previously publicly asserted “the claim any resourcing decision increased the likelihood of the Bondi attack is false” and that the royal commission would make its own assessment.
A fourth source who deals closely with ASIO, the AFP and state agencies said their view was counter-terrorism resourcing had been both adequate and significant.
Another source said significant resourcing was appropriately directed to countering threats not technically described as “counter-terrorism” but nevertheless with grave national security or threat-to-life implications.
Last August, the prime minister described how an ASIO-led inquiry had uncovered Iran was behind two “extraordinary and dangerous” antisemitic firebombings in Australia “aimed at creating fear, stoking internal divisions and eroding social cohesion”.
While it had no direct bearing on the Bondi attack and was not indicative of mostly good interagency relations inside Australia’s joint state and federal counter terror teams, the entrenched hostility between parts of the NSW Police command and the AFP highlights how interagency co-operation can be improved, two federal sources said.
