Bondi shooter visited gun shop during Philippines stay: Police

One of the two alleged Bondi Beach shooters visited a gun store during their stay in the Philippines, police said on Saturday as they attempted to retrace the pair's movements.

An Australian counter-terrorism team is investigating whether Sajid Akram and his son Naveed met with Islamist extremists during a nearly month-long visit to the southern island of Mindanao before the mass shooting that killed 15 people in Sydney six days ago.

The staff of Davao City's GV Hotel told AFP this week that the two men had stayed holed up in their small room for most of their 28-day stay, leaving only briefly each morning.

"What we've seen is one of them visiting a gun shop," Davao regional police spokeswoman Catherine Dela Rey said on Saturday, adding later that it was 50-year-old Sajid Akram who had been seen.

"Our reviewing of CCTVs is ongoing so we can see the other places they visited and the people they could have spoken with," she said.

While little has been made public at this stage of the investigation, National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano told reporters on Friday there was "no way" the men could have left the city to conduct training.

"They would go out and come back after two or three hours, the longest was eight hours, but still ... that time window (would) not suffice for them to get out of Davao," he said.
Police inquiries had also revealed that neither of the men had visited any of the city's seven gun ranges, he said.

President Ferdinand Marcos has criticised media reports that he said misleadingly portrayed the Philippines "as a training hotspot for terrorism."

"For years, we have acted decisively to dismantle terrorist networks, to secure communities, and to sustain our hard-earned peace," he said in a speech celebrating the 90th anniversary of the country's armed forces on Friday.

"To dismiss these gains with unfounded speculation is not acceptable."

The Philippine military has said Mindanao's remaining jihadists now number little more than 50, from a high of 1,257 in 2016.

Agence France-Presse