SYDNEY: The father and son behind one of Australia's deadliest mass shootings spent nearly the entire month of November in the Philippines, Manila's immigration department confirmed Tuesday, with the father entering the country as an "Indian national."
Sajid Akram and his son Naveed, who allegedly killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's Bondi Beach, arrived on November 1 with the southern province of Davao listed as their final destination.
"Sajid Akram, 50, Indian national, and Naveed Akram, 24, Australian national, arrived in the Philippines together last November 1, 2025 from Sydney, Australia," immigration spokeswoman Dana Sandoval told AFP, adding they departed on November 28.
Meanwhile, Authorities said the attack was designed to sow panic among the nation's Jews, but have so far given little detail about the gunmen's deeper motivations.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday gave one of the first hints that the pair had been radicalised by an "ideology of hate."
"It would appear that this was motivated by Islamic State ideology," Albanese told national broadcaster ABC.
"With the rise of ISIS more than a decade ago now, the world has been grappling with extremism and this hateful ideology," he said in a separate interview.
Police found a car registered to Naveed Akram parked near the beach in the aftermath of the shooting.
They found improvised bombs and "two homemade ISIS flags", New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said on Tuesday, using another name for the Islamic State group.
Authorities are facing mounting questions over whether they could have acted earlier to foil the attack.
Albanese said Naveed Akram, reportedly an unemployed bricklayer, had come to the attention of Australia's intelligence agency in 2019 but was not considered an imminent threat at the time.
"They interviewed him, they interviewed his family members, they interviewed people around him," Albanese said.
"He was not seen at that time to be a person of interest."
Police are still piecing together the duo's movements before the shooting.
A key question is whether they met with Islamist extremists on a trip to the Philippines last month, Australian media reported.
"The reasons why they went to the Philippines, and the purpose of that, and where they went, is under investigation at the moment," Lanyon told reporters on Tuesday.
Naveed reportedly told his mother on the day of the attack that he was heading out of the city on a fishing trip. Instead, authorities believe that he was holed up in a rental apartment with his father plotting the assault.
Carrying long-barrelled guns, they peppered the beach and a nearby park with bullets for 10 minutes before police shot and killed 50-year-old Sajid.
Naveed, 24, remains in a coma in hospital under police guard.