Timeline to terror: Unsealed photos, videos capture alleged two-month plot of Bondi shooters

It was in October this year that accused mass murderers Naveed and Sajid Akram, a son and his father, appeared to ramp up plans for their terrorist attack.

It was then that they booked an Airbnb in south-west Sydney for the first three weeks of December, court documents allege, and filmed themselves firing shotguns and rehearsing tactics in the country.

It was also in October that they recorded a video of themselves in front of an image of an Islamic State flag, with four long-arm guns with ammunition rounds, hanging on the wood-panelled wall behind them.

In that video, Naveed appears to recite a passage from the Koran in Arabic. Then, in English, both men allegedly talk about their motivation for the Bondi attack and condemn the acts of Zionists.

“[They] appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack,” say the allegations contained in a police fact sheet released by the NSW Local Court on Monday, after media advocated for their release.

Naveed Akram, 24, survived the attack and faces 15 murder charges. His father, 50, was shot dead by police.

The documents leave many questions unanswered, such as how the men were radicalised, when they allegedly began planning the attack on a group of Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah by the beach, and what prompted them to carry it out.

But they show that by December, the men appear to have been thoroughly prepared.

According to the fact sheet, they had amassed six guns, including two single-barrel shotguns and a Beretta rifle (Sajid had a NSW licence for firearms). They had made three pipe bombs, one tennis ball bomb, and a large IED bomb, police allege.

Using white paint on black fabric, they had made two Islamic State flags. With a 3D printer, they had printed parts of a shotgun speed loader. And back at their Bonnyrigg family home, they had a wooden homemade firearm and a long bow, with 12 arrows.

About December 7, the pair moved into the Airbnb in Campsie. Naveed’s mother told police she thought they were away on holiday in southern NSW. Her son would “call her each morning from a payphone”, the documents say, “and would discuss what he planned to do that day”.

On the night of December 12, two days before the attack, the men drove to the Bondi Beach car park. CCTV footage shows them climbing out of the car and walking to the footbridge – “the same position”, the police facts allege, “where they attended two days later and shot at members of the public”.

On the day of the alleged attack, they began their preparations in the early hours of the morning. Soon after 2am, CCTV filmed them carrying long and bulky items wrapped in blankets to their car. Police believe the packages contained two weapons, bombs and flags.

They went back inside. They are next seen leaving the Campsie short-term rental just after 5pm, and driving towards Bondi. The car stops for 20 minutes outside a house on Ocean Street, in Woollahra, where the men allegedly look inside the back seat and boot.

They then travel towards Syd Einfeld Drive, before parking in a bus zone next to the Bondi Beach footbridge. They allegedly put the Islamic State flags inside the front and rear windscreens, making them clearly visible to onlookers, then took three guns and three bombs out of the car.

As they approached the footbridge, investigators allege they threw the bombs towards the crowd of people who were celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in Archer Park.

The bombs, made of aluminium piping containing explosive powder and ball bearings, were viable but did not explode. Then the men allegedly began shooting towards the festival. Each man held a gun, and the third firearm sat by Naveed’s feet.

After between six and seven minutes, Sajid was shot and killed, and Naveed was shot in the abdomen. Police arrested him, and began CPR. Fifteen people lay dead, and 40 were injured.

In police raids on their homes and cars that night, officers seized both men’s phones, on which the videos were allegedly recorded. They also found three copies of the Koran, one with dog-eared pages, and another with highlighted passages.

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