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Naveed Akram’s alleged history of ISIS links before Bondi massacre · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Thursday December eighteen, twenty twenty five. Twenty four year
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  Speaker 1: old Sydney man Navid Akram is facing fifty nine charges
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  Speaker 1: over the Bondai Beach massacre he allegedly committed with his father, Sajid,
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  Speaker 1: who was shot dead by police at the scene on
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  Speaker 1: Sunday after waking from a coma under police guard in hospital.
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  Speaker 1: Akram was charged with fifteen counts of murder, forty counts
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  Speaker 1: of wounding with intent to murder, one count of committing
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  Speaker 1: a terrorist act, one count of discharging a firearm with
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  Speaker 1: intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and one count of
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  Speaker 1: placing an explosive device. Akram, who has not been found
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  Speaker 1: guilty of anything and will likely defend these charges, also
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  Speaker 1: faces one count of displaying a prohibited terrorist organization's symbols
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  Speaker 1: to an ISIS flag draped over a silver car the
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  Speaker 1: father and son allegedly drove to the scene of their
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  Speaker 1: mass slaughter. Today we look at this young Sydney bricklayer's
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  Speaker 1: connections to people and places associated with ISIS and its
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  Speaker 1: dream of a global caliphate where jahardest Sunni Islam was
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  Speaker 1: God's law. Stephen Rice is The Australian's New South Wales
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  Speaker 1: editor and in the wake of Sunday's Bondai Beach massacre, RICEI,
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  Speaker 1: you've been looking at the history of Navid Akram. He's
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  Speaker 1: the twenty four year old, allegedly the younger shooter involved
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  Speaker 1: in the Bondai attack. There is a vision of someone
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  Speaker 1: reportedly Navid Akram, firing a high powered rifle at Jewish men,
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  Speaker 1: women and children at Bondai Beach. Let's start at the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: and it's important to say that Navid Akram has not
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  Speaker 1: been convicted of any crimes. He's only just been charged.
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  Speaker 1: It's likely that he will face a criminal process, where
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  Speaker 1: of course he will have the right to plead not
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  Speaker 1: guilty and be judged accordingly. What do we know about
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  Speaker 1: Navid Akram's first interaction with someone who we might describe
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  Speaker 1: as having links to terror ideology.
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  Speaker 2: Well, we know that back in twenty nineteen, as a
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  Speaker 2: very impressionable seventeen year old, he was drawn into this
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  Speaker 2: what you might call a circle of influence among people
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  Speaker 2: who definitely had links with Islamic state, and in fact
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  Speaker 2: a couple of them were convicted of being members of
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  Speaker 2: Islamic State, recruiters for Islamic State. And this all occurred
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  Speaker 2: around something called the dah Wis Street Movement, which collection
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  Speaker 2: of Islamic you might say, extremist Islamists who preached in
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  Speaker 2: the streets trying to convert people to Islam. Now, some
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  Speaker 2: of them clearly were doing more than that behind the scenes.
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  Speaker 2: One of them in particular was a guy called Isaac
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  Speaker 2: al Matari. He was not only an Islamic State operative,
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  Speaker 2: but was the self declared head of the Islamic State
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  Speaker 2: in Australia.
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  Speaker 1: It's alleged he small allegiance to is vowing to sacrifice
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  Speaker 1: himself for the cause, and had sent money offshore to
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  Speaker 1: buy guns and TNT explosives.
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  Speaker 2: Now we know for a fact that he was a
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  Speaker 2: friend of akrom At around this time in twenty nineteen.
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  Speaker 2: While they were preaching on the streets, they were clearly
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  Speaker 2: behind the scenes up to other things. And as well
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  Speaker 2: as Elmatari, there was another individual called use of Uinate.
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  Speaker 2: Now Uinate was arrested only a few months after he
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  Speaker 2: and Navid Akron were photographed together. And in today's paper
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  Speaker 2: we have a photograph of the two of them together. Now,
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  Speaker 2: not long after they were photographed together, Ernweight was arrested
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  Speaker 2: by counter terrorism police. They broke through his door and
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  Speaker 2: Ernwaight tried to smash his phone, even cut his hand
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  Speaker 2: on the glass from the phone trying to get rid
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  Speaker 2: of this evidence. And when the police unlocked the phone,
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  Speaker 2: they found some really disturbing stuff. Like Erniwait has appeared
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  Speaker 2: to have kind of obsession with beheadings. His phone was
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  Speaker 2: just full of beheading videos that he had sent around
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  Speaker 2: to his very young followers. And the phone also revealed
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  Speaker 2: that some of the people who he was preaching this
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  Speaker 2: stuff to were children, and obviously very impressionable children, but
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  Speaker 2: they were going along with the stuff that he was
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  Speaker 2: putting out.
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  Speaker 1: These were young guys. Isaaca Matari, the person who was
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  Speaker 1: convicted and who called himself isis As leader in Australia.
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  Speaker 1: He was convicted of plotting a terror attack. He talked
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  Speaker 1: about it, attacking landmarks in Sydney. He was only around
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  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty when all this was going on. Navid Akram
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  Speaker 1: would have only been around the same age as well.
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  Speaker 1: And this is one of the features of Islamic state,
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  Speaker 1: isn't it. Ricey without commenting in particular on these individuals.
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  Speaker 1: Islamic State rose in twenty fourteen in Syria in the
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  Speaker 1: Middle East, preaching a form of sunny jihadest ideology were
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  Speaker 1: harvest ideology, that is about the elimination of Jews, the
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  Speaker 1: elimination of the West and Western influences, and they wanted
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  Speaker 1: to establish a caliphate and online recruiting was one of
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  Speaker 1: their most powerful tools. That's where we've seen foreign fighters
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  Speaker 1: who went to Syria to fight with ISIS. They were
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  Speaker 1: radicalized on what was then called Twitter, went they with
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  Speaker 1: beheading videos.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, online was the biggest source of recruits for fighters
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  Speaker 2: going to Syria to fight with Islamic State. And a
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  Speaker 2: couple of the most famous Australians including you know one
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  Speaker 2: who held up you know, severed heads to the camera,
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  Speaker 2: Mohammed Alamara and Karla Sharuf. We're friends with Wissam Hahdad
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  Speaker 2: is the guy who runs this Almadina Dahua Center, which
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  Speaker 2: is you know, another crucial stepping stone, another block in
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  Speaker 2: this chain of influence. Her Dad, you'll remember, was the
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  Speaker 2: hate preacher who was found just earlier this year to
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  Speaker 2: have vilified Jews, was calling Jews despicable names and was
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  Speaker 2: found to have breached the Discrimination Act. He was a
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  Speaker 2: friend of these characters and he also knew Navid Akram.
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  Speaker 2: We don't know what passed between her dad and Navid Akram,
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  Speaker 2: but we do know that there was an association.
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  Speaker 1: Very early on. In the aftermath of the Bondeou Beach massacre.
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  Speaker 1: There were reports subsequently confirmed by ASIO that at one
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  Speaker 1: point Navid Akram was on asio's radar. There's no suggesting
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  Speaker 1: that his father, sujitd Akram, who was killed at the
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  Speaker 1: scene of the Bondeo massacre, was on asio's radar, but
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  Speaker 1: Navid A. Cram certainly was for a period of time.
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  Speaker 1: And what officials have said is that he was picked
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  Speaker 1: up or looked at in association with Isazak el Matari,
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  Speaker 1: the guy who claimed to be Isis as the leader
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  Speaker 1: in Australia. But they determined that he wasn't planning anything
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  Speaker 1: that he didn't he hadn't actually committed any crimes or
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  Speaker 1: was planning any crimes, and so the fact that he
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  Speaker 1: was in ASIO sites kind of went nowhere. We know
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  Speaker 1: that he then got a job as a bricklayer or
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  Speaker 1: he was working as a bricklayer, and that he had
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  Speaker 1: been out of work. What's now emerged is that Navid
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  Speaker 1: and Sajid Akram traveled to the Philippines in November this year,
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Now that seems benign until you think
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  Speaker 1: about the fact that the Philippines is where ISIS has
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  Speaker 1: come closest to Australia, in the province of Mindenow, in particular,
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  Speaker 1: the city of Marawi. ISIS associated militias have been fighting
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  Speaker 1: the Philippines government. At one point they took over an
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  Speaker 1: entire city. Now Philippines police and the army and the
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  Speaker 1: government say that ISIS has dwindled to almost nothing in
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  Speaker 1: the Philippines, that they've really been reduced to nothing, that
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  Speaker 1: there's no evidence that they're holding terror training camps or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: So what do we think the vid Akrom was doing there?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the assumption certainly is that he and
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  Speaker 2: his father went there for military training. Some of this
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  Speaker 2: is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight. Clearly,
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  Speaker 2: Navid Akram was on asio's and the AFP's watch lists
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  Speaker 2: for some time. But it's also clear that neither of
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  Speaker 2: those organizations has the manpower to continually monitor the activities
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  Speaker 2: of marginal or what were then regarded as marginal players.
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  Speaker 2: Now having said that, you might have thought that when
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  Speaker 2: somebody who was some time ago on a watch list
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  Speaker 2: and his father is known to have a large collection
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  Speaker 2: of guns, might have twigged somewhere, But clearly it didn't. Again,
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  Speaker 2: I think it's important to say that the AFP in
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  Speaker 2: particular was very under resourced at this point, that they
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  Speaker 2: just weren't able to keep an eye on all the
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  Speaker 2: people that they wanted to.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Agencies of policing like Veneo FAUD's Crime Commission, for example,
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  Speaker 1: they have agents who spend all their time listening to
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  Speaker 1: their targets. They have listening devices in cars, in houses,
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  Speaker 1: in businesses, and they have human intelligence as well. That
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  Speaker 1: is incredibly resource intensive, isn't it. Do we think asy
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  Speaker 1: on the AFP have the resources to do that for
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  Speaker 1: everybody who's on a watch list.
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  Speaker 2: They definitely don't. But I suspect that even if they
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  Speaker 2: had vastly increased resources, that somebody like Navid Akrum might
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  Speaker 2: have been on the outer edge anyway of the people
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  Speaker 2: that they were really interested in. He was very young
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  Speaker 2: at the time, and I think after twenty nineteen seems
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  Speaker 2: to have very successfully gone underground, or at least kept
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  Speaker 2: himself out of mischief. Again, with the benefit of hindsight,
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  Speaker 2: maybe there was a good reason.
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  Speaker 1: For that coming up. What happens to radical Islamic preachers now? Wednesday,
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  Speaker 1: Josh Friedenberg, the form of federal Liberal Treasurer, made an
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  Speaker 1: incredibly powerful speech at Bondi Beach with a list of
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  Speaker 1: things that he wants the federal government to do. Top
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  Speaker 1: of the list is banning hate speech and kicking radical
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  Speaker 1: hate preachers, as he described them out of the country.
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  Speaker 1: That would be people like with Some had Ad. He
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  Speaker 1: described with some had Added Center as a factory of hate.
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  Speaker 1: That's a phrase that we've heard also used by Senator
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  Speaker 1: James Patterson from a liberal party. Where do you think
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  Speaker 1: this is going to go? Ricey, Do you think that
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  Speaker 1: the federal government has got the guts or the will
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  Speaker 1: to crack down on freedom of speech in relation to
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  Speaker 1: these particular type of individuals.
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  Speaker 2: I think they're going to be forced into very radical changes,
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  Speaker 2: not just to gun laws, but to the kind of
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  Speaker 2: discrimination laws that we've seen bought against people like with
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  Speaker 2: Some had Added in the past are going to have
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  Speaker 2: to be tightened. The reality, though, is you can't kick
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  Speaker 2: Australian citizens out of the country. It's illegal. So no
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  Speaker 2: matter what political posturing may be occurring, and you can
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  Speaker 2: understand why people are angry, why people would like that
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  Speaker 2: to happen, But under our system of laws, you can't
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  Speaker 2: kick out Australian citizens no matter what they've done. You
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  Speaker 2: can send them to jail if we can prove that
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  Speaker 2: they've encouraged terrorism, but we can't kick them out of
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  Speaker 2: the country.
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  Speaker 1: Stephen Rice is The Australian's new South Wales editor and
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  Speaker 1: is leading our coverage of the Bondeai Beach terror attacks.
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  Speaker 1: You can read the reporting by Stephen and all our
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  Speaker 1: journalists right now at the Australian dot com. A he