What was going on for a month in the two fanatics who shed blood on the most famous beach in Australia last Sunday? Sanjid and Navid Akram had stayed the whole of November in the Philippines, in an area considered a den of .
Two weeks after returning to , a father and son launched a terrorist attack on a crowd attending a religious festival at Bodai Beach, killing 15 and injuring dozens.
Sanjid, 50, and Navid, 25, had flown from Sydney to Manila and from there to Davao City on the island of Mindanao, the former on an Indian passport and the latter on an Australian passport. Authorities in the Philippines and Australia are now trying to trace their movements and contacts as they say it was not a pleasure trip (November 1-28).
Ruthless executors
On the contrary, there is a fear that attacks by other jihadists in one or the other country or both, organized by the same center, will follow. Anti-terrorism officials consider it possible that the father and son, during their stay in the Philippines, to become ruthless executioners.
For decades, Philippine authorities have been trying to root out extremist organizations from the 20 million-strong island of Mindanao, the Sulu archipelago and other southern islands where Islam was present even before Christianity arrived there with Magellan’s ships in 1521. These islands are home to most of the Philippines’ nearly 7 million Muslim minority. (6.5% of the population) according to the 2020 census.
The centuries-old confrontation between Islam and Catholicism has been fertile ground for the growth of separatist Islamic movements since the 1970s and more recently for the spread of propaganda first by al-Qaeda, then by the Islamic State.
The largest jihadist organization in the Philippines is Abu Sayyaf, which has a history of bombings, beheadings, and kidnappings of foreign nationals. In 2014 the organization’s then-leader, Hapilon, declared allegiance to the Islamic State and was named the “emir” of Southeast Asia. Jihadists from Indonesia, Malaysia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and even Chechnya have fought in the Philippines, while Filipino jihadists have been identified in ISIS videos in Syria.
A landmark for the organization’s action was the attack on the city of Marawi in 2017. The city of 200,000 inhabitants, mainly Muslims, enjoyed a special status of self-government, such as the application of sharia (Islamic law) for Muslims.
Long contacts with Islamists
It took the army five months to recapture the city, after heavy ground and air bombardment. Then-President Duterte declared martial law across Mindanao while promising full immunity to soldiers as long as they did not leave any jihadists alive.
Many senior Abu Sayyaf figures were killed in battles with the military, but the group has scaled back its attacks but remained active. In December 2023, a suicide bomber blew himself up during a mass service at the University of Marawi, killing 4 people and injuring 50. A year later, the group’s fighters ambushed and killed three security forces, even though the military had announced the disbandment of Abu Sayyaf and some of its members had laid down their arms as part of a program of reform and social reintegration.
It remains unknown whether the perpetrators of the Sydney attack met in the Philippines with officials of Abu Sayyaf or another jihadist group, and whether they received specific orders. What is certain is that Akram’s son had contacts with extremist Islamists in Australia for years but was not considered dangerous by the authorities, while Akram’s father legally owned rifles which they both used with characteristic ease.
.
