Bondi Beach gunmen Sajid and Naveed Akram stayed at a hotel in the southern city of Davao for the entire time they were in the Philippines and left their room for only an hour or two at a time, according to a hotel staff member.
Philippine authorities are investigating the father and son’s travel to the country in the month before the mass shooting at Bondi Beach, in which 15 people were killed and 50-year-old Sajid Akram was shot dead by police.
GV Hotel worker Jenelyn Sayson told this masthead that the father and son shared a room at the hotel near Davao City Hall and the police headquarters for 27 days last month.
They stayed in room 315, which has two single beds.
“From the time they arrived until they checked out, they never left the city … because we saw them going in and out of the hotel every day,” Sayson told this masthead.
Philippine immigration officials have said Sajid and Naveed Akram flew into the Philippines on November 1 and departed on November 28, with Davao as their final destination.
According to the hotel, they extended their stay for another week on three occasions after arriving on November 1 and initially booking for a week.
Sayson, the hotel employee, said the longest they left their room for was one to two hours at a time.
She said there was no CCTV footage of them because its recording capacity was only for a week, but military officers had come and taken away the hotel’s computer hard drive.
Naveed Akram used a Philippine phone number when registering with the hotel.
According to the hotel worker, the Akrams rarely spoke with staff, weren’t seen with any visitors, and wrappings from fast-food chain Jollibee had been found in their room.
“We thought they probably had a business here in the city, since they would go out and just come back again,” Sayson told local news site MindaNews.
They each had one large piece of luggage and a backpack, and paid cash when they extended their stay, she told the site.
Rooms at the GV Hotel in Davao can be booked online for as little as $22 a night. The hotel is close to the city’s business district.
Davao is the main city on the southern island of Mindanao, where Islamist militant groups, including Islamic State East Asia (ISEA), have had a presence.
NSW Police found homemade Islamic State flags in the Akrams’ car after the massacre, but Philippine officials have said there is no evidence they trained with Islamist militants while in the country.
Philippines National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano said in a statement: “A mere visit does not support allegations of terrorist training and the duration of their stay would not have allowed for any meaningful or structured training.”
According to the Australian government’s national security website, ISEA “remains a deadly terrorist threat in the Philippines”, where it has been based, and the country is “a target destination for foreign terrorist fighters”.
But Ano said only remnants of Islamic State remained after being significantly degraded by the armed forces since the 2017 siege of Marawi, a Muslim city in Mindanao’s west, six to eight hours’ drive from Davao.
He said there had been no recorded terrorist training by IS-affiliated groups since 2017.
IS affiliates were responsible for the bombing of a Catholic Mass at a university gymnasium in Marawi in December 2023 that left four people dead, and the US State Department reported the Philippines remained in the top 20 nations in the world for terrorist incidents in 2023.
However, according to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the “neutralisation of high-value individuals” and other efforts to crush militants in Mindanao have reduced local terrorist group numbers from 1257 members in 2016 to 50 in 2025.
The military on Wednesday released a list of 10 key militant figures who had been killed in security operations since 2017, the most recent a leader of the Islamic State-linked Dawlah Islamiyah-Hassan Group on December 7.
The list also included the suspected mastermind of the Marawi University bombing, who the military reported had died in a clash between pro-IS militants and Philippine soldiers in February 2023.
More Bondi terror coverage
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
Chris Barrett is an investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a former South-East Asia correspondent, and chief sports reporter.Connect via Twitter or email.
