I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. As the country demands answers as to howard shooting at a hunker gathering at Bondai that left fifteen people dead was able to happen, new details about the alleged shooters have come to light. Authorities say the attack was inspired by Islamic State. The two government had recently traveled to the Philippines for military style training. The surviving government now in custody, had been known to Rasio since twenty nineteen. Despite those
apparent warnings, the attack went ahead. What followed raised serious questions about the limits of Australia's canter terrorism systems and the growing threat of lone Act to terrorism. Today, Chairing Global Islamic Politics at Deacon University, Professor Greg Barton on how a mass attack like this can still happen in Australia even when intelligence agencies are on high alert. It's Thursday, December eighteenth, Greg, thanks for joining me. Sunday's massacre was
very quickly designated a terror attack. When that happens, what extra powers did that give authorities to investigate what happened?
It makes a tremendous difference in terms of freeing up resources, not just freeing up but allocating resources. So in this case it's New South Wales Police that's responding. They immediately get help from colleagues from Australian Federal Police, they get help from Victoria Police obviously, ASIER and other agencies. There's a thing called the Joint counter Terrorism Team that kicks into action once you've designated you're working on a counter
terrorism investigation. You can't just sort of risk being the boy who cried wolf and say I want a terror investigation every time you're facing difficulties that you've got to have good reasons. But clearly the circumstances were compelling. You had a hundred by the Sea event, clear targeting of people at that event by two men firing not randomly but delibery. That looks like politically motivated violence terrorism. So that was a sense an easy call to make.
An act of evil any Semitism, terrorism that has struck the heart.
Of our nation. If we go back to the stabbing of the Syrian Orthodox archbishop some months ago, that also fairly quickly was desitated a terrors of investigation. The sixteen year old with a knife aim for the face of the fifty three year old bishop. The mid sermon attack ruled one of terror by New South Wales Police, but it took some hours in the middle of early the next morning to make that call because you have to sort of be able to justify what you're doing.
We know that one of the gunment Navied Acram, was known to Asia as far back as twenty nineteen. Can you just explain what that really means, because Azio must be aware of many more people that they consider actual threats.
Are not correct, that is right. That's one of the problems they're dealing with, hundreds and hundreds of people who have sometimes quite similar profiles. Story there. We now know with Navid is that he was with a group called Street Dakwa. Could come across as over zealous sort of fundamentalists.
Conversation putting Dalla doing the book continuing the book of the work of the prophets. We need to put the message that all those what and Muhammed's last miss and joables Bice spread dollar way you can spread the message, not on those one wherever you can.
But unfortunately there was a darker side to the Street dut Wie group. It was not just telling people about their religion that was actually associated with Islamic State and jihadi extremism. He was also in a circle because in Sydney at the time, everyone who was, you know, sort of jihadi extremist position was friends in the same larger
social network. So there was a network that ran through the Asala bookshop in Bankstown and was linked up with the street dut Why guys and pretty much everyone in New South Wales ran through that network. People from other states would visit. They knew people in Melbourne and Brisbane. So it was a pretty from the police point of view. Once they started looking at it, they consider as a peace So the police moved in an arrested a man called Isaac Almatri on the grounds that he was leading
in Islamic State. So in the process of doing that they discovered a number of associates people who had been in that circle. They found Navid Akram. They went and spoke with him, They spoke with his father. They kept it up for some months. Their determination was that then seventeen year old Navid you know, had fallen in with
the fundamentalist extremist group. They didn't see him breaking any laws, they didn't see him likely to break any laws or much less, you know, cause violence, And at a certain point they said, okay, this is not a priority. He's not somebody who's likely to be a problem, and they moved on. That's understandable, I think, given as you said, the number of people they're looking at hundreds of people
who come across the desk in a similar way. The problem is it would appear they didn't go back the following year or two years later, and subsequently over the last six years to see how Navid was tracking, how his family was, what had changed, had he moved to away from that youthful sort of extremism. So when he and his father booked, traveled to Manila and departed Sydney on November one, if there had been any attention given to Navid at that point, red flags would have been
up and they would have been questions asked. But that wasn't happening. Sajid Akrum and Navid's father had his gun license issued in twenty twenty three, so some years after that initial encounter. Doesn't seem anyone then was concerned about the previous ASIO investigation. So it's understandable how these things happened.
Partly it's siloed lack of information sharing with the gun license perhaps, but I think it's also that a mistake was made and not going back to check how Navid was traveling and whether, in fact, what had begun as youthful extremism was actually still there. In an ideal world, ASIO and other agencies should have been back the following year and the years of subsequent just to say Navid, how are you doing. You're not trying to mess with
your life. I just want to know how you're traveling, Speak with his family, speak with his work associates or whatever, just to see whether anything was amiss that I suspect the reason it wasn't done is they weren't allocated resources for that sort of follow up work. They'll allocate a resources the initial of investigation, allocated resources for incident response, but not for the kind of maintenance and that's the failure of the system.
How do AZIO and other authorities tract the threat post by load actors.
It's very challenging because the way they track terrorism threats is through intercepted communications. People in these extremist networks, whether they're Islamic State or old Kaieda or whether they're far right extremists have gone to ground. They don't telegraph their plans in what they would hope with encrypted messaging. They don't try and network, They don't try and say who's
got the precursors for the explosive device or assembling. They know that the moment they start doing that, they're in trouble. They'll get found out, so they fall back on an old school system of face to face contacts, handwritten notes. So that's the challenge with loan actor attackers, and that's why aziohead Mike Bojes says that's what keeps us awake at night. But what we do know is that a generally can't help but tell somebody what they want to do.
This is called leakage, and people generally hear that and say that's crazy talk and dismiss it. I think the message for the public now is you hear somebody saying something crazy, don't write it off. I think the other thing we need to do is expect that there will be loan actor attacks that we didn't see coming, and to make sure we do it in terms of securing public places as best we can. So we do this when it comes to people using vehicles as weapons as
is like State was doing just eight years ago. Think about the nice attack on bus still day evening the lotter Umbolus attack in Barcelona using vans trucks as weapons. Most of our toblic spaces now have bollards, planter boxes, barricades, street art that diminishes that risk. What we haven't done clearly well enough is have something like Hunter by the Sea and a proper assessment of saying, well, if we had gunman turn up, you know where would that go.
They go to the high vantage point. They try and have a high spot, so take a shot of people. Well, there's a bit boog whichhold secure that we should have uniform personnel, obvious security in place. We should have had a trained marksman on duty with a long arm with a sniper rifle able to respond if there was the remote but real possibility of an active shooter incident. They didn't have that prep in place, and I think there's
a lesson to be learned there. The police officer who took down those two terrorists came up behind them with a sidearm with a pistol. Now if he missed first time, they're going to turn around when they hit the bang take aim at him. A very brave thing to do. But also it's not Hollywood. I mean, in the real life, you can't ping people down from ten to twenty meters away with a pistol. It's really hard. He did something remarkable,
but it was very risky. So you know, it's not just knowing that the lone actors will attack, that's by definition is hard. We need to prepare for when it does happen. How do we.
Respond Coming up with one alleged governments still alive, authorities get the rare chance to ask why, learned what to watch for.
There has been reports in the news about how two of famers traveling to the Philippines last month. I can confirm that they did travel to the Philippines. The reasons why they went to the Philipphones and the purpose of that and where they went when they were there is under investigation.
Greg.
As you said, it's been revealed that Navid Akram and his father, Sergeant, traveled to the Philippines last mother for military style training. As the ABC is also reporting, what role does the Philippines play as a training ground for gee artists? From around the world.
Well before Old Kaido, there were insurgent groups in the Moro, the Bunks of Morow, the ethnic Moro, a Muslim minority on the western side of the Noel and the southernmost island of the Philippines and associated small islands on an archipelago that run through to Malaysia to the west. They were fighting on ethno nationalist grounds for reasons that are sort of fairly familiar in terms of grievance that fuels insurgencies.
When al Qaeda emerged, they traveled to join al Qaeda in Afghanistan when the Soviet army was there and they were involved in training camps along with Indonesians and Malaysians and others. Those training camps were moved out of Afghanistan into Pakistan in the nineteen nineties, and then Pakistan closed them down and pushed them out, and many of the people in those camps went to a camp called Camp Abubaka and Minddal. Eventually Camp Auberbuka was closed down as well,
and we thought that problem was largely dealt with. But then when Islamic State fled up, groups like ABUSAIV group that had been ill disciplined mainly engaged in kidnapping of people as a business model, so a criminal activity. They swore allegiance to Islamic State. It was dismissed as just sort of brand building marketing. But in twenty seventeen there was a siege that lasted seven months in the most
populous Muslim majority city in the Philippines, Marawi. The Philippine military has bombarded parts of the city of Marawi and deployed scores of soldiers as it seeks to push back against militants from groups linked to Islamic Steep. The Philippine authorities responded with force. Many Islamic State sympathizers were arrested or killed. Many repented and said on the games up, I'm not going to do this anymore. But there are those who went to ground, and so there's a significant
remnant Islamic State presence in western Mindanao. So what we would assume is that when Sajid and Navid went to Davaial, the capital city of Mindanao. They don't think they went to Davao because they were looking for beaches. That's not where you go for beaches. I think they went there to make the final stages of preparation, face to face with people who with whom they could talk without being detected, because it was analog, old school face to face communication, not digital.
Sajik Akron is dead, but Navid Akron is still alive and little face charges. What type of charges would you expect for this attack, Greed.
I think clearly terrorism charges. I think there's just no ambiguity the fact that it was probably Navid, maybe it was his father, were both together that made these Islamic State banners. It's shades of the Linn Cafe siege that occurred in the same day in twenty fourteen. There the gunman wanted to get hold of an Inflamic State banner because he wanted to signal that I'm not doing this by I'm acting alone. We know that, but I want to be seen as representing Islamic State. I want them
to recognize me. And sure enough, in their next magazine Debek, they praised him and said, you know, he was a sheer, a felthy raphedia they called him, but now he's a hero. This is the same sort of a response that these guys were looking for. So their motivation appears to be political and specifically the extremism of Islamic state. I don't
think there's any ambiguity there. The more important thing now, though, is the conversations with Navid, getting him to open up about the journey he's been on, to understand the timelines, the people he's intersected with, what other threats there are, what lessons we can You'd expect that he's not keen on speaking, but he'll be in that situation where very clever people will draw out his story, and people in
that situation often like to tell their story. They don't want to help the police, but they also want to tell their story. So let's see what comes out. I think it's really important that he's alive and able to tell that story because we need to understand what's going on inside his head and with his father. How do they get to the situation, Who was influencing them? What were the warning signs in hindsight that we can use to stop this happening in future?
What do you think we can learn from conversations that authorities will be having with Navid? And what does history tell us about ies actors in particular that have been caught Do they have a history of actually opening up and telling authorities why they have done what they've done.
Well, those that have been caught in Syria that were part of the physical color of fate, you know, tend to have stories about I was just a driver, I wasn't a fighter. So those, you know, obviously in many cases they're not being honest. It's not easy to get them to speak, even if they are persuaded to be honest. You know, it's always difficult to know how much of what they're saying they believe themselves. So it's a challenge.
But you know, on Australian soil, in the situations that Navid is in, I think it's going to be easier to over time piece together history in his timeline by him revealing things that he doesn't think are critically important that paint the biggest story. I think the information will come out. I think partly because he will want to talk and try and justify what he's doing, but partly because over time he will give information which is going
to be very helpful. He's not been arrested overseas, he's not held in a foreign sort of detention center. This is the best possible circumstances for understanding history and it's important that we do understand his story because there'll be other Navid's out there that we want to you know, we want to engage with and try and deter from this path and try and help. That's the best way to prevent terrorism.
Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show and speaking to us.
It's been a pleasure. Thanks very much.
Also in the news, the Prime Minister says the federal government intends to throw all the resources necessary to combat anti Semitism following the mass shooting at Bondo Beach. Anthony Alberinezi says the government will undertake any legislative change needed to find anti Semitism as the government works the Titan gun laws. Despite resistance from the National Party and gun groups, state and territory governments are considering clamping down on gun
licenses and banning non citizens from owning firearms. And response to the massacre, a Victoria has recorded its highest number of new cancer diagnoses since population wide reporting began in nineteen eighty two, according to figures in Cancer Council Victoria's annual report. For the first time, the report examines the link between cancer incidents and survival outcomes, amongst migro communities.
It finds several overseas born groups have higher rates of liver, stomach, thyroid and pancreatic cancers, while prostate, boal and melanoma rates are generally higher amongst Australian born Victorians. You've been listening to seven Am. We'll be back tomorrow