Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. As
Speaker 1: the country demands answers as to howard shooting at a
Speaker 1: hunker gathering at Bondai that left fifteen people dead was
Speaker 1: able to happen, new details about the alleged shooters have
Speaker 1: come to light. Authorities say the attack was inspired by
Speaker 1: Islamic State. The two government had recently traveled to the
Speaker 1: Philippines for military style training. The surviving government now in custody,
Speaker 1: had been known to Rasio since twenty nineteen. Despite those
Speaker 1: apparent warnings, the attack went ahead. What followed raised serious
Speaker 1: questions about the limits of Australia's canter terrorism systems and
Speaker 1: the growing threat of lone Act to terrorism. Today, Chairing
Speaker 1: Global Islamic Politics at Deacon University, Professor Greg Barton on
Speaker 1: how a mass attack like this can still happen in
Speaker 1: Australia even when intelligence agencies are on high alert. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: December eighteenth, Greg, thanks for joining me. Sunday's massacre was
Speaker 1: very quickly designated a terror attack. When that happens, what
Speaker 1: extra powers did that give authorities to investigate what happened?
Speaker 2: It makes a tremendous difference in terms of freeing up resources,
Speaker 2: not just freeing up but allocating resources. So in this
Speaker 2: case it's New South Wales Police that's responding. They immediately
Speaker 2: get help from colleagues from Australian Federal Police, they get
Speaker 2: help from Victoria Police obviously, ASIER and other agencies. There's
Speaker 2: a thing called the Joint counter Terrorism Team that kicks
Speaker 2: into action once you've designated you're working on a counter
Speaker 2: terrorism investigation. You can't just sort of risk being the
Speaker 2: boy who cried wolf and say I want a terror
Speaker 2: investigation every time you're facing difficulties that you've got to
Speaker 2: have good reasons. But clearly the circumstances were compelling. You
Speaker 2: had a hundred by the Sea event, clear targeting of
Speaker 2: people at that event by two men firing not randomly
Speaker 2: but delibery. That looks like politically motivated violence terrorism. So
Speaker 2: that was a sense an easy call to make.
Speaker 3: An act of evil any Semitism, terrorism that has struck
Speaker 3: the heart.
Speaker 2: Of our nation. If we go back to the stabbing
Speaker 2: of the Syrian Orthodox archbishop some months ago, that also
Speaker 2: fairly quickly was desitated a terrors of investigation. The sixteen
Speaker 2: year old with a knife aim for the face of
Speaker 2: the fifty three year old bishop. The mid sermon attack
Speaker 2: ruled one of terror by New South Wales Police, but
Speaker 2: it took some hours in the middle of early the
Speaker 2: next morning to make that call because you have to
Speaker 2: sort of be able to justify what you're doing.
Speaker 1: We know that one of the gunment Navied Acram, was
Speaker 1: known to Asia as far back as twenty nineteen. Can
Speaker 1: you just explain what that really means, because Azio must
Speaker 1: be aware of many more people that they consider actual threats.
Speaker 2: Are not correct, that is right. That's one of the
Speaker 2: problems they're dealing with, hundreds and hundreds of people who
Speaker 2: have sometimes quite similar profiles. Story there. We now know
Speaker 2: with Navid is that he was with a group called
Speaker 2: Street Dakwa. Could come across as over zealous sort of fundamentalists.
Speaker 4: Conversation putting Dalla doing the book continuing the book of
Speaker 4: the work of the prophets. We need to put the
Speaker 4: message that all those what and Muhammed's last miss and
Speaker 4: joables Bice spread dollar way you can spread the message,
Speaker 4: not on those one wherever you can.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately there was a darker side to the Street
Speaker 2: dut Wie group. It was not just telling people about
Speaker 2: their religion that was actually associated with Islamic State and
Speaker 2: jihadi extremism. He was also in a circle because in
Speaker 2: Sydney at the time, everyone who was, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of jihadi extremist position was friends in the same larger
Speaker 2: social network. So there was a network that ran through
Speaker 2: the Asala bookshop in Bankstown and was linked up with
Speaker 2: the street dut Why guys and pretty much everyone in
Speaker 2: New South Wales ran through that network. People from other
Speaker 2: states would visit. They knew people in Melbourne and Brisbane.
Speaker 2: So it was a pretty from the police point of view.
Speaker 2: Once they started looking at it, they consider as a
Speaker 2: peace So the police moved in an arrested a man
Speaker 2: called Isaac Almatri on the grounds that he was leading
Speaker 2: in Islamic State. So in the process of doing that
Speaker 2: they discovered a number of associates people who had been
Speaker 2: in that circle. They found Navid Akram. They went and
Speaker 2: spoke with him, They spoke with his father. They kept
Speaker 2: it up for some months. Their determination was that then
Speaker 2: seventeen year old Navid you know, had fallen in with
Speaker 2: the fundamentalist extremist group. They didn't see him breaking any laws,
Speaker 2: they didn't see him likely to break any laws or
Speaker 2: much less, you know, cause violence, And at a certain
Speaker 2: point they said, okay, this is not a priority. He's
Speaker 2: not somebody who's likely to be a problem, and they
Speaker 2: moved on. That's understandable, I think, given as you said,
Speaker 2: the number of people they're looking at hundreds of people
Speaker 2: who come across the desk in a similar way. The
Speaker 2: problem is it would appear they didn't go back the
Speaker 2: following year or two years later, and subsequently over the
Speaker 2: last six years to see how Navid was tracking, how
Speaker 2: his family was, what had changed, had he moved to
Speaker 2: away from that youthful sort of extremism. So when he
Speaker 2: and his father booked, traveled to Manila and departed Sydney
Speaker 2: on November one, if there had been any attention given
Speaker 2: to Navid at that point, red flags would have been
Speaker 2: up and they would have been questions asked. But that
Speaker 2: wasn't happening. Sajid Akrum and Navid's father had his gun
Speaker 2: license issued in twenty twenty three, so some years after
Speaker 2: that initial encounter. Doesn't seem anyone then was concerned about
Speaker 2: the previous ASIO investigation. So it's understandable how these things happened.
Speaker 2: Partly it's siloed lack of information sharing with the gun
Speaker 2: license perhaps, but I think it's also that a mistake
Speaker 2: was made and not going back to check how Navid
Speaker 2: was traveling and whether, in fact, what had begun as
Speaker 2: youthful extremism was actually still there. In an ideal world,
Speaker 2: ASIO and other agencies should have been back the following
Speaker 2: year and the years of subsequent just to say Navid,
Speaker 2: how are you doing. You're not trying to mess with
Speaker 2: your life. I just want to know how you're traveling,
Speaker 2: Speak with his family, speak with his work associates or whatever,
Speaker 2: just to see whether anything was amiss that I suspect
Speaker 2: the reason it wasn't done is they weren't allocated resources
Speaker 2: for that sort of follow up work. They'll allocate a
Speaker 2: resources the initial of investigation, allocated resources for incident response,
Speaker 2: but not for the kind of maintenance and that's the
Speaker 2: failure of the system.
Speaker 1: How do AZIO and other authorities tract the threat post
Speaker 1: by load actors.
Speaker 2: It's very challenging because the way they track terrorism threats
Speaker 2: is through intercepted communications. People in these extremist networks, whether
Speaker 2: they're Islamic State or old Kaieda or whether they're far
Speaker 2: right extremists have gone to ground. They don't telegraph their
Speaker 2: plans in what they would hope with encrypted messaging. They
Speaker 2: don't try and network, They don't try and say who's
Speaker 2: got the precursors for the explosive device or assembling. They
Speaker 2: know that the moment they start doing that, they're in trouble.
Speaker 2: They'll get found out, so they fall back on an
Speaker 2: old school system of face to face contacts, handwritten notes.
Speaker 2: So that's the challenge with loan actor attackers, and that's
Speaker 2: why aziohead Mike Bojes says that's what keeps us awake
Speaker 2: at night. But what we do know is that a
Speaker 2: generally can't help but tell somebody what they want to do.
Speaker 2: This is called leakage, and people generally hear that and
Speaker 2: say that's crazy talk and dismiss it. I think the
Speaker 2: message for the public now is you hear somebody saying
Speaker 2: something crazy, don't write it off. I think the other
Speaker 2: thing we need to do is expect that there will
Speaker 2: be loan actor attacks that we didn't see coming, and
Speaker 2: to make sure we do it in terms of securing
Speaker 2: public places as best we can. So we do this
Speaker 2: when it comes to people using vehicles as weapons as
Speaker 2: is like State was doing just eight years ago. Think
Speaker 2: about the nice attack on bus still day evening the
Speaker 2: lotter Umbolus attack in Barcelona using vans trucks as weapons.
Speaker 2: Most of our toblic spaces now have bollards, planter boxes, barricades,
Speaker 2: street art that diminishes that risk. What we haven't done
Speaker 2: clearly well enough is have something like Hunter by the
Speaker 2: Sea and a proper assessment of saying, well, if we
Speaker 2: had gunman turn up, you know where would that go.
Speaker 2: They go to the high vantage point. They try and
Speaker 2: have a high spot, so take a shot of people. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a bit boog whichhold secure that we should have
Speaker 2: uniform personnel, obvious security in place. We should have had
Speaker 2: a trained marksman on duty with a long arm with
Speaker 2: a sniper rifle able to respond if there was the
Speaker 2: remote but real possibility of an active shooter incident. They
Speaker 2: didn't have that prep in place, and I think there's
Speaker 2: a lesson to be learned there. The police officer who
Speaker 2: took down those two terrorists came up behind them with
Speaker 2: a sidearm with a pistol. Now if he missed first time,
Speaker 2: they're going to turn around when they hit the bang
Speaker 2: take aim at him. A very brave thing to do.
Speaker 2: But also it's not Hollywood. I mean, in the real life,
Speaker 2: you can't ping people down from ten to twenty meters
Speaker 2: away with a pistol. It's really hard. He did something remarkable,
Speaker 2: but it was very risky. So you know, it's not
Speaker 2: just knowing that the lone actors will attack, that's by
Speaker 2: definition is hard. We need to prepare for when it
Speaker 2: does happen. How do we.
Speaker 1: Respond Coming up with one alleged governments still alive, authorities
Speaker 1: get the rare chance to ask why, learned what to
Speaker 1: watch for.
Speaker 3: There has been reports in the news about how two
Speaker 3: of famers traveling to the Philippines last month. I can
Speaker 3: confirm that they did travel to the Philippines. The reasons
Speaker 3: why they went to the Philipphones and the purpose of
Speaker 3: that and where they went when they were there is
Speaker 3: under investigation.
Speaker 2: Greg.
Speaker 1: As you said, it's been revealed that Navid Akram and
Speaker 1: his father, Sergeant, traveled to the Philippines last mother for
Speaker 1: military style training. As the ABC is also reporting, what
Speaker 1: role does the Philippines play as a training ground for
Speaker 1: gee artists? From around the world.
Speaker 2: Well before Old Kaido, there were insurgent groups in the Moro,
Speaker 2: the Bunks of Morow, the ethnic Moro, a Muslim minority
Speaker 2: on the western side of the Noel and the southernmost
Speaker 2: island of the Philippines and associated small islands on an
Speaker 2: archipelago that run through to Malaysia to the west. They
Speaker 2: were fighting on ethno nationalist grounds for reasons that are
Speaker 2: sort of fairly familiar in terms of grievance that fuels insurgencies.
Speaker 2: When al Qaeda emerged, they traveled to join al Qaeda
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan when the Soviet army was there and they
Speaker 2: were involved in training camps along with Indonesians and Malaysians
Speaker 2: and others. Those training camps were moved out of Afghanistan
Speaker 2: into Pakistan in the nineteen nineties, and then Pakistan closed
Speaker 2: them down and pushed them out, and many of the
Speaker 2: people in those camps went to a camp called Camp
Speaker 2: Abubaka and Minddal. Eventually Camp Auberbuka was closed down as well,
Speaker 2: and we thought that problem was largely dealt with. But
Speaker 2: then when Islamic State fled up, groups like ABUSAIV group
Speaker 2: that had been ill disciplined mainly engaged in kidnapping of
Speaker 2: people as a business model, so a criminal activity. They
Speaker 2: swore allegiance to Islamic State. It was dismissed as just
Speaker 2: sort of brand building marketing. But in twenty seventeen there
Speaker 2: was a siege that lasted seven months in the most
Speaker 2: populous Muslim majority city in the Philippines, Marawi. The Philippine
Speaker 2: military has bombarded parts of the city of Marawi and
Speaker 2: deployed scores of soldiers as it seeks to push back
Speaker 2: against militants from groups linked to Islamic Steep. The Philippine
Speaker 2: authorities responded with force. Many Islamic State sympathizers were arrested
Speaker 2: or killed. Many repented and said on the games up,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do this anymore. But there are
Speaker 2: those who went to ground, and so there's a significant
Speaker 2: remnant Islamic State presence in western Mindanao. So what we
Speaker 2: would assume is that when Sajid and Navid went to Davaial,
Speaker 2: the capital city of Mindanao. They don't think they went
Speaker 2: to Davao because they were looking for beaches. That's not
Speaker 2: where you go for beaches. I think they went there
Speaker 2: to make the final stages of preparation, face to face
Speaker 2: with people who with whom they could talk without being detected,
Speaker 2: because it was analog, old school face to face communication,
Speaker 2: not digital.
Speaker 1: Sajik Akron is dead, but Navid Akron is still alive
Speaker 1: and little face charges. What type of charges would you
Speaker 1: expect for this attack, Greed.
Speaker 2: I think clearly terrorism charges. I think there's just no
Speaker 2: ambiguity the fact that it was probably Navid, maybe it
Speaker 2: was his father, were both together that made these Islamic
Speaker 2: State banners. It's shades of the Linn Cafe siege that
Speaker 2: occurred in the same day in twenty fourteen. There the
Speaker 2: gunman wanted to get hold of an Inflamic State banner
Speaker 2: because he wanted to signal that I'm not doing this
Speaker 2: by I'm acting alone. We know that, but I want
Speaker 2: to be seen as representing Islamic State. I want them
Speaker 2: to recognize me. And sure enough, in their next magazine Debek,
Speaker 2: they praised him and said, you know, he was a sheer,
Speaker 2: a felthy raphedia they called him, but now he's a hero.
Speaker 2: This is the same sort of a response that these
Speaker 2: guys were looking for. So their motivation appears to be
Speaker 2: political and specifically the extremism of Islamic state. I don't
Speaker 2: think there's any ambiguity there. The more important thing now, though,
Speaker 2: is the conversations with Navid, getting him to open up
Speaker 2: about the journey he's been on, to understand the timelines,
Speaker 2: the people he's intersected with, what other threats there are,
Speaker 2: what lessons we can You'd expect that he's not keen
Speaker 2: on speaking, but he'll be in that situation where very
Speaker 2: clever people will draw out his story, and people in
Speaker 2: that situation often like to tell their story. They don't
Speaker 2: want to help the police, but they also want to
Speaker 2: tell their story. So let's see what comes out. I
Speaker 2: think it's really important that he's alive and able to
Speaker 2: tell that story because we need to understand what's going
Speaker 2: on inside his head and with his father. How do
Speaker 2: they get to the situation, Who was influencing them? What
Speaker 2: were the warning signs in hindsight that we can use
Speaker 2: to stop this happening in future?
Speaker 1: What do you think we can learn from conversations that
Speaker 1: authorities will be having with Navid? And what does history
Speaker 1: tell us about ies actors in particular that have been
Speaker 1: caught Do they have a history of actually opening up
Speaker 1: and telling authorities why they have done what they've done.
Speaker 2: Well, those that have been caught in Syria that were
Speaker 2: part of the physical color of fate, you know, tend
Speaker 2: to have stories about I was just a driver, I
Speaker 2: wasn't a fighter. So those, you know, obviously in many
Speaker 2: cases they're not being honest. It's not easy to get
Speaker 2: them to speak, even if they are persuaded to be honest.
Speaker 2: You know, it's always difficult to know how much of
Speaker 2: what they're saying they believe themselves. So it's a challenge.
Speaker 2: But you know, on Australian soil, in the situations that
Speaker 2: Navid is in, I think it's going to be easier
Speaker 2: to over time piece together history in his timeline by
Speaker 2: him revealing things that he doesn't think are critically important
Speaker 2: that paint the biggest story. I think the information will
Speaker 2: come out. I think partly because he will want to
Speaker 2: talk and try and justify what he's doing, but partly
Speaker 2: because over time he will give information which is going
Speaker 2: to be very helpful. He's not been arrested overseas, he's
Speaker 2: not held in a foreign sort of detention center. This
Speaker 2: is the best possible circumstances for understanding history and it's
Speaker 2: important that we do understand his story because there'll be
Speaker 2: other Navid's out there that we want to you know,
Speaker 2: we want to engage with and try and deter from
Speaker 2: this path and try and help. That's the best way
Speaker 2: to prevent terrorism.
Speaker 1: Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show
Speaker 1: and speaking to us.
Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, the Prime Minister says the federal
Speaker 1: government intends to throw all the resources necessary to combat
Speaker 1: anti Semitism following the mass shooting at Bondo Beach. Anthony
Speaker 1: Alberinezi says the government will undertake any legislative change needed
Speaker 1: to find anti Semitism as the government works the Titan
Speaker 1: gun laws. Despite resistance from the National Party and gun groups,
Speaker 1: state and territory governments are considering clamping down on gun
Speaker 1: licenses and banning non citizens from owning firearms. And response
Speaker 1: to the massacre, a Victoria has recorded its highest number
Speaker 1: of new cancer diagnoses since population wide reporting began in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, according to figures in Cancer Council Victoria's
Speaker 1: annual report. For the first time, the report examines the
Speaker 1: link between cancer incidents and survival outcomes, amongst migro communities.
Speaker 1: It finds several overseas born groups have higher rates of liver, stomach,
Speaker 1: thyroid and pancreatic cancers, while prostate, boal and melanoma rates
Speaker 1: are generally higher amongst Australian born Victorians. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to seven Am. We'll be back tomorrow