Davao City, Philippines: With rows of palm trees, deckchairs and a restaurant that juts out over water so clear you can see the starfish, the Seagull White Sand Beach Resort is a popular respite from Davao City’s busted and bustling downtown.
Visitors swim in a roped-out section of Davao Bay, watched over by lifeguards. Even in the smothering heat of early afternoon, Christmas party revellers sing outdoor karaoke.
And it was here, Filipino investigators believe, one or both of the Bondi gunmen Sajid and Naveed Akram visited in November – one of only a handful of places police clocked the pair during a month-long residence on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. It’s seven kilometres from the $24-a-night hotel room in Davao City’s Poblacion district, where the father and son were reportedly holed up for most of that month.
Another sighting was the Shooter’s Guns and Ammo Corporation, a small shop about 150 metres from the hotel. Sajid browsed a cabinet of protective vests and eyeballed gun posters on the wall, then left, a staff member recalled. His visit stuck with her because he refused to even acknowledge her when she asked if he needed assistance.
Likewise, the pair was retrospectively traced to Davao City’s Mercy Islamic Foundation, whose leaders have turned over hours of CCTV footage to police, but say they cannot recall seeing the Akrams among the 600-odd worshippers they sometimes get on Fridays.
Back at the White Sands Resort, the apparent fleeting visit of soon-to-be terrorist gunmen has been a talking point.
“I was told they went for a swim in the morning, about 10am,” said a lifeguard, adding that, of course, he didn’t see them personally.
A security guard at the front entrance heard something different. It was only the son, Naveed. A taxi driver had collected him from somewhere nearby, hot and sweaty, as though he’d been exercising, the man said.
Truth is, no one here really knows. As with each of the 27 days in November the pair spent in the southern Philippines, it is fragments, glimpses and maybes.
The investigation in the Philippines has been slow and painstaking, complicated by a dearth of security camera footage. Much of it was automatically wiped in the weeks between the shootings and the revelation that they had been in the country.
But tracing their path through the Philippines may be necessary to understand why on December 14, just weeks after the trip, the two men espousing Islamic State ideology shot dead 15 people celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah in Sydney’s Archer Park.
Had the Akrams spent their November in Europe, America or New Zealand, it would not have raised so many suspicions. But the island of Mindanao, with a history of Islamic extremism, is not in the usual tourist brochures.
Islamic State-inspired militants reached their rampaging zenith in 2017 when they laid siege to Marawi City, a six-hour drive from Davao, and held it for more than 150 days until it was liberated by the Philippine military. Some 900 militants and more than 200 troops and civilians were killed.
Since then, terrorist groups on the island have been beaten into irrelevance, according to the Philippine government.
“For years, we have acted decisively to dismantle terrorist networks, to secure communities, and to sustain our hard-earned peace,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said in response to reporting that the Akrams may have been receiving last-minute technical or spiritual training from militant remnants still lingering in the Mindanao jungles.
“To dismiss these gains with unfounded speculation is not acceptable.”
Echoing his boss’s frustrations, National Security Adviser, secretary Eduardo M Año, complained days after the Bondi massacre that “a mere visit does not support allegations of terrorist training”.
Filipino media has gone big on these angles. One headline, citing a rear-admiral operating in the South China Sea, said the Bondi attacks were “rooted in antisemitism, not Philippine-based radicalisation”.
The most detailed accounts of the Akrams’ movements come from the staff of the GV Hotel, an ultra-budget option nestled among pawnshops, massage parlours and competitor accommodation offering cheap rooms in three-hour blocks.
The Akrams checked in on November 1 and checked out on the 28th, paying week by week, as if unsure of their itinerary.
According to worker Jenelyn Sayson, “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.”
The longest they left their room on any given day was one or two hours, she added.
If this is true, Sajid and Naveed Akram spent at least 23 hours a day through 27 days holed up together in a room hardly bigger or better equipped than a low-security jail cell.
Their room, 315, has two single beds – each with one pillow and one sheet – separated by less than a metre. The bathroom has no hot water and the1980s-style Sanyo TV plays only one clear channel. It is plugged into one of only two power points. The other socket is occupied by a feeble box air-conditioner.
If it was a “mere visit”, as Año suggested, what on earth were they doing in such a room for so long?
But the assertion by staff that they never left the city is dubious. This masthead observed long periods of time, even during the day, when the front desk was unattended.
Also raising serious doubts about this account is the revelation that investigators have detected a “ping” from a phone.
A few kilometres outside the Philippine town of M’lang – a six-hour return drive from Davao City – a roundabout offers travellers two options.
The road to the right goes to the town proper, a bustling Catholic-majority hamlet in Cotabato province. The straight option veers left into the province of Maguindanao Del Sur, where remnants of Islamic State-inspired militant groups are thought to linger in towns and jungles.
In November, a phone belonging to one of the Bondi gunmen passed somewhere near that roundabout, Filipino investigators believe. The precise location of the ping suggested a right turn towards M’lang, or more precisely, Dungoan, one of the town’s 37 sub-villages.
The region has a history of violence. Islamic State-inspired group Daulah Islamiyah (DI) was responsible for torching a commuter bus in M’lang that killed at least three people in 2021. Before Filipino clearance operations killed or drove away militants that same year, DI strongholds were only about 10 kilometres away, Dungoan village chief Patutin Ali Sagadan Jr told this masthead.
On Friday last week, Sagadan said, police, army and intelligence officers poured into Dungoan armed with this digital data. But it appeared to be a dead end. Tracing led Sagadan and investigators to a roadside field inhabited only by a handful of grazing cattle.
“It could have been that they [one or both of Akrams] were passing the area and made a call or sent a message, and it was picked up here,” Sagadan said the police told him. “None of [the village leaders] have monitored the presence of those two people.”
One possibility was Naveed, Sajid, or both, continued beyond M’lang to the wild central and western areas so teeming with kidnappers and bandits that the Australian government warns citizens in the strongest terms not to travel there.
Sagadan said he had heard reports of Islamic militants, however fragmented and leaderless, still practising their ideology in neighbouring provinces.
But if it was the case that the Akrams passed beyond M’lang and Dungoan, should there not have been more phone pings? A source close to the investigation said only M’lang township had detected such activity.
Yet another possibility was that the Akrams never went that way at all, that it was all a mistake and the GV Hotel staff were right all along.
Sajid was killed by police on the Bondi footbridge he used as a shooting platform and shield for his killing. One man – Naveed – holds the answers. He is in Long Bay Correctional Complex in Sydney’s east, charged with 15 counts of murder.
Bondi Beach incident helplines:
- Bondi Beach Victim Services on 1800 411 822
- Bondi Beach Public Information & Enquiry Centre on 1800 227 228
- NSW Mental Health Line on 1800 011 511 or Lifeline on 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or chat online at kidshelpline.com.au
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Zach Hope is South-East Asia correspondent. He is a former reporter at the Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
