• Police reveal homemade pipe, tennis ball bombs were thrown, but did not explode
• Australian state govt vows reforms to tighten gun, hate speech laws

SYDNEY: Two suspects of a deadly mass shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach trained for the attack in the countryside, recorded a video detailing their anti-”Zionist” motivations, and made a reconnaissance trip days before the rampage, police alleged in court documents released on Monday.

The details emerged as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed tougher laws against hate speech and extremism in the wake of the attack that killed 15 people, the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in nearly three decades.

Father and son Sajid Akram and Naveed are accused of the attack. Sajid, 50, an Indian national who entered Australia on a visa in 1998, was shot and killed by police during the incident. His 24-year-old son, Naveed, an Australian-born citizen, was moved from a hospital to jail on Monday, police said.

Police documents tendered to the court said the two had carried out “firearms training” in what was believed to be the New South Wales countryside prior to the shooting. Authorities released pictures showing the accused firing shotguns and moving in what was described as a “tactical manner”.

The pair also recorded a video in October railing against “Zionists” while sitting in front of a flag of the Islamic State group, detailing their motivations for the attack, police said. They also made a nighttime “reconnaissance” trip to Bondi Beach just days before the killings, the documents showed.

Australian police also alleged that homemade pipe and tennis ball bombs were thrown at the crowd but failed to detonate.

Crackdown on guns, ‘terrorist symbols’

Separately, Australia’s federal government has flagged a suite of reforms to gun ownership and hate speech laws, as well as a review of police and intelligence services.

Albanese also announced last week a sweeping buyback scheme to “get guns off our streets”. It is the largest gun buyback since 1996, when Australia cracked down on firearms in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 35 people at Port Arthur.

And the government of New South Wales — where the shooting took place — recalled its parliament for two days on Monday to introduce what it called the “toughest firearm reforms in the country”. “We can’t pretend that the world is the same as it was before that terrorist incident on Sunday,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told reporters.

“I’d give anything to go back a week, a month, two years, to ensure that didn’t happen, but we need to make sure that we take steps so that it never happens again.”

The new rules will cap the number of guns an individual can own to four, or ten for exempted individuals like farmers.

There are more than 1.1 million firearms in the state, officials said.

The legislation would also ban the display of “terrorist symbols”, including the flag of the militant Islamic State, which was found in a car linked to one of the alleged shooters. Authorities will also be able to prohibit protests for up to three months following a terrorism incident.

Minns said on Monday he would also look into stricter hate speech legislation next year, including restrictions on the phrase “globalise the intifada”.

The phrase is a common chant at pro-Palestinian rallies and refers to past uprisings against Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

Meanwhile, Australian police say homemade pipe and tennis ball bombs were thrown at a crowd at Bondi Beach before a mass shooting but failed to detonate. Just after 2:00am on the day of the attack, the men were captured on CCTV video carrying long and bulky items wrapped in blankets from a short-stay rental house in the suburb of Campsie to a car, said the police report.

They later drove to Bondi around 5:00pm. Police believe the items wrapped in the blankets were two single-barrel shotguns, a Beretta rifle, three pipe bombs, a tennis ball bomb and a large improvised explosive device.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2025