One of two men suspected of carrying out Australia’s deadliest mass shooting in three decades will be charged later on Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, as the funerals of the Jewish victims of Sunday’s attack began.
The alleged father-and-son perpetrators opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach on Sunday.
Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead by police at the scene, while his 24-year-old son, named in local media as Naveed, emerged from a coma on Wednesday after also being shot by police.
“He will be charged formally, if he hasn’t been so already, I would expect that will take place over the coming hours,” Albanese said in a podcast interview on Wednesday morning.
Investigators expect to question the son once the medication wears off and legal counsel is present, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said.
He remains in a Sydney hospital under heavy police guard.
The men accused of carrying out Sunday’s attack had travelled to the southern Philippines, a region long plagued by militancy, weeks before the shooting that Australian police said appeared to be inspired by Daesh.
US President Donald Trump told a Hanukkah event at the White House late on Tuesday that he was thinking of the victims of the “horrific and antisemitic terrorist attack”.
“We join in mourning all of those who were killed, and we’re praying for the swift recovery of the wounded,” he said.
A funeral for Rabbi Eli Schlanger, an assistant rabbi at Chabad Bondi Synagogue and a father of five, was held on Wednesday.
He was known for his work for Sydney’s Jewish community through Chabad, a global organisation fostering Jewish identity and connection.
The government and intelligence services are also under pressure to explain why Sajid Akram was allowed to legally acquire the high-powered rifles and shotguns used in the attack.
The government has already promised sweeping reforms to gun laws.
Akram’s son, meanwhile, was briefly investigated by Australia’s domestic intelligence agency in 2019 over alleged links to Daesh, but there was no evidence at the time he posed a threat, Albanese said.
Albanese said Ahmed Al Ahmed, 43, the man who tackled one of the shooters to disarm his rifle and suffered gunshot wounds, was due to undergo surgery on Wednesday.
Al Ahmed’s uncle, Mohammed Al Ahmed, in Syria, said his nephew left his hometown in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib nearly 20 years ago to seek work in Australia.
“We learned through social media. I called his father, and he told me that it was Ahmed. Ahmed is a hero, we’re proud of him. Syria, in general, is proud of him,” the uncle told Reuters.
The family of 22-year-old police officer Jack Hibbert, who was shot twice on Sunday and had been on the force for just four months, said in a statement on Wednesday that he had lost vision in one eye and faced a “long and challenging recovery” ahead.
“In the face of a violent and tragic incident, he responded with courage, instinct, and selflessness, continuing to protect and help others whilst injured, until he was physically no longer able to,” the family said.
Health authorities said 22 people were still in several Sydney hospitals.
Other shooting victims included a Holocaust survivor, a husband and wife who first approached the gunmen before they started firing, and a 10-year-old girl named Matilda, according to interviews, officials and media reports.
Matilda’s father told a Bondi vigil on Tuesday night he did not want his daughter’s legacy to be forgotten.
“We came here from Ukraine … and I thought that Matilda is the most Australian name that can ever exist. So just remember the name, remember her,” local media reported him as saying.
In Bondi on Wednesday, swimmers gathered on Sydney’s most popular beach and held a minute’s silence.
“This week has obviously been very profound, and this morning, I definitely feel a sense of the community getting together, and a sense of everyone sitting together,” Archie Kalaf, a 24-year-old Bondi man, told Reuters.
“Everyone’s grieving, everyone’s understanding and processing it in their own way.”
