COTABATO CITY, Philippines – In the days since the gunfire at Sydney, Australia’s Bondi Beach tore through a Jewish festival, killing at least 16 people, security forces have been trying to retrace a trail that leads far from Australia and into the terrain of Mindanao. Military and police intelligence units are examining whether the two shooters – a father and son – went from Davao to Central Mindanao or the Bangsamoro region and used the area as a training ground before the December 14 assault, according to officials familiar with the investigation. The attackers were identified by authorities as Sajid Akram, 50, an Indian national, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, an Indian-Australian. The Bureau of Immigration confirmed that the Akrams flew from Sydney to the Philippines on November 1 and arrived in Davao City, which hosts Mindanao’s only international airport. They remained in the country for nearly four weeks before returning to Sydney on November 28, just over two weeks before the mass shooting. Officials say there is, so far, no evidence that the pair trained with local militant groups or entered camps in Central Mindanao or the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The investigation remains active, and authorities acknowledge that the timeline, the destination and the scale of the attack have raised troubling questions that are still unanswered.
