‘It looks very haphazard’: doubts cast on reports claiming alleged Bondi shooters may have met IS in the Philippines | Bondi beach terror attack

A former jihadi who claims to have knowledge of how the Islamic State works in the Philippines says he believes it’s unlikely the alleged Bondi gunmen met with the group when they “haphazardly” travelled to the country before the attack.

Authorities have confirmed the alleged father-and-son terrorists, Naveed and Sajid Akram, travelled to the Philippines on 1 November and flew out of the country on 28 November – weeks before the massacre at the Chanukah by the Sea event.

Investigators in Australia and the Philippines say they are still investigating the purpose of their trip, and what they did after arriving in Davao City, in the country’s south.

The former jihadi, who has renounced his previous views and spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity, said a person wanting to engage in violence “would not likely go to Davao itself to meet militants”.

“To be honest, everything about it looks very haphazard,” he said.

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He said if they did intend to meet with representatives from IS, “they clearly do not seem to know what they were doing”.

“If a person were planning on doing something nefarious, they would not catch a flight from Manila to Davao and leave an ID trail.”

His said his main suspicion was that authorities will be investigating whether the pair travelled to the Philippines in an attempt to get authorisation, known as an ijāzah, to carry out an attack.

“Australia has not had anyone appointed to be an official representative (of IS),” he said. “The Philippines has had an approved representative since 2016.”

But he said that would be difficult for anyone to connect with representatives of the group.

“The fact that the [Philippines] government can barely find them [the IS-aligned militants] makes it clear that some random Aussie isn’t easily going to be able to find them either,” he said.

“If they didn’t have any links … very few Australians have links with those in the Philippines, it would have made it very, very difficult …”

Experts say attack should be ‘wake-up call’

Prof Rohan Gunaratna is the head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. He separately told the Guardian he believes authorities would be investigating whether the duo could have travelled to the Philippines to gain approval from a cleric to carry out an attack.

But Gunaratna also said he suspected they may also have been in the Philippines for a “bonding trip”.

He said a review of videos showing Naveed proselytising on the streets of Sydney in 2019 suggested “he’s not preaching what is called mainstream Islam”.

“He is preaching what is called Salafi jihadism,” he said.

Gunaratna said IS’s praise of the attack – released in the group’s newsletter last week – was designed to inspire and instigate other similar atrocities, which authorities need to be trying to disrupt.

“Every successful terrorist attack is an intelligence failure, and the Bondi attack … should be a wake-up call, not only for Australia,” he said.

Clarke Jones, an Australian National University academic who has worked with imprisoned extremists in the Philippines, said self-trained clerics in the country do run unregistered madrasahs.

These mosques could have helped prepare them for the attack, but this preparation would have been spiritual or religious, rather than focusing on tactical or combat training, he said.

Eduardo Año, the Philippines’ national security adviser, says it is clear the Akrams never left Davao nor received military-style training in the country.

Investigators say there are numerous places the two could have visited or met contacts in the area. Dozens of establishments sit between the GV Hotel and a nearby Jollibee fast food restaurant, where they were known to buy their meals.

Police are reviewing CCTV footage and tracing taxi trips to reconstruct their movements, and say all possibilities are being entertained.