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  • 7 months ago
The Bondi gunmen spent almost a month in the Philippines two weeks before the shooting. Investigators are still piecing together their movements, but a hotel claims the pair stayed there for the duration of their visit and mostly kept to their room.

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00:00We're here at a hotel in Davao where hotel staff say that for the almost entire month
00:07of November that Sajid and Navid Akram, the alleged Bondi shooters, stayed in.
00:13Now this is quite significant.
00:15Philippines immigration officials have said that they are investigating the movements of
00:19the pair and confirmed that they stayed in the Philippines for almost the entire month
00:23of November.
00:24But this is the room where hotel staff here in Davao say that the pair stayed and I just
00:30want to show you what it looks like.
00:32So as you can see, it's a very small room.
00:35There's two single beds here, there's a small window with a limited view to the outside world,
00:40an air conditioning unit, there's very basic furnishings as well as an older television
00:45and one small bathroom here.
00:48Now hotel staff say that Sajid and Navid Akram mostly stayed in the room.
00:54And that's for a stay from the 1st of November to checking out on the 28th of November.
00:59They said that they left the hotel at most for one hour or so a day and they don't know
01:05what they did when they left the hotel, nor indeed what they did while they were inside
01:09the hotel.
01:10Now the hotel is a cash only business.
01:12It costs about 24 Australian dollars a night to stay here.
01:16The hotel also said that they didn't have a receipt on hand for their stay.
01:20They said that that has been sent to another hotel.
01:24They also say that they didn't take a copy of a passport or identification from the two
01:29when they booked.
01:31Now Philippines immigration officials as well as police will continue to piece together
01:35a timeline of what they believe the pair did while they were here in the southern Philippines
01:40island of Mindanao.
01:42But no doubt it's forming a major part of an investigation both in the Philippines as
01:46well as here in Australia.
01:48There's been a lot of frustration from senior officials in the Philippines especially over
01:52a characterisation of what they've described as Philippines as an Islamic terrorist hotspot.
01:59That's certainly a characterisation we heard from a spokesperson for the president just yesterday.
02:04They were quite frustrated about that.
02:07But no doubt there are still many questions as to why the pair may have travelled here.
02:11If indeed they stayed in this hotel room for a month, who they may have met with here in
02:16Davao.
02:17The southern Philippines island here in Mindanao has grappled with Islamic extremism really
02:21for decades.
02:22And although the numbers of Islamic State fighters are far fewer than there used to be, it's still
02:26no doubt something that authorities have been confronting and are still continuing to confront
02:32in Mindanao.
02:33So there are many unanswered questions, but for the moment hotel staff say that they were
02:37shocked to learn of the Bondi shooting.
02:39They said they recognised them in photos.
02:42So no doubt this will be investigated further by police in Philippines and Australia.
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