A former colleague of one of the Bondi Beach attackers told a foreign media outlet that Naveed Akram’s background is Indian.

In an interview with A Current Affair, former co-worker Lachie said he immediately identified Akram when he saw his photograph online.

While revealing about Akram’s personal life, the former colleague said: “Yeah, like his background is Indian and Italian… his mom’s Italian, his dad’s Indian.”

A father and son duo opened fire on a Jewish festival at Australia’s best-known beach on Sunday evening, killing 15 people, including a child, and wounding 42 more.

The colleague said he was scrolling through social media when he came across the image. “Shock, disbelief — proper shock,” he said, recalling his reaction. “I didn’t think that someone you could spend time with day in, day out on a job site could do something so cruel.”

He added that regardless of motive, the attack was unjustifiable. “No matter what the motives are or whatever is behind it, it’s just wrong. And for what?” he said.

The former colleague said he had worked with Akram intermittently for around five years in the construction sector. “Probably on and off for about five years as a bricky,” he said.

He explained that there was nothing in Akram’s behaviour that suggested he was capable of such violence. “You wouldn’t pick it. But yeah, that’s him,” he said.

Authorities have condemned the attack as an act of terrorism, though they have not named the two shooters — one killed at the scene, and the other now in hospital.

However, Australian public broadcaster ABC said the alleged assailant was Naveed Akram from the western Sydney suburb of Bonnyrigg, quoting an anonymous official, and other local media reported that police had raided his home.

According to the Australian media reports, Naveed was apprehended at the shooting and taken to the hospital, where he remains under police guard in a critical but stable condition. His father Sajid, who was reported to have owned a fruit shop, died at the scene.

Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed Sajid arrived in Australia on a student visa in 1998, which was converted to a partner visa in 2001, and that he has since held a resident return visa. Burke also said Sajid’s son, Naveed, is an Australian citizen born in 2001.

According to reports, the pair had told family they were going on a South Coast fishing trip, with Naveed’s mother, Verena, saying he had gone to Jervis Bay with his father for the weekend and last spoke to the family on Sunday morning.

‘Terrified’ Sydney man misidentified as Bondi shooter

A Sydney man said he had received death threats and was “terrified” to leave his home Monday after his photo was widely shared online as the gunman responsible for the Bondi Beach shooting.

Photos of a beaming man in a green Pakistan cricket jersey pinged across social media.

Some of the posts were shared thousands of times, drawing vitriolic comments.

But the photo was taken from the Facebook profile of a different Naveed Akram, who pleaded Monday for people to stop the misinformation in a video published by the Pakistan Consulate of Sydney.

“Per media reports, one of the shooters’ name is Naveed Akram and my name is Naveed Akram as well,” he said in the video.

“That is not me. I have nothing to do with the incident or that person,” he said, condemning the “terrible” Bondi Beach shooting.

“I just want everyone’s help to help me stop this propaganda,” he said, asking for users to report accounts that misused his photo, which he had shared in a 2019 post.

‘Life-threatening’

The 30-year-old, who lives in a northwestern suburb of Sydney, told AFP he first heard around 9:30pm on Sunday that he had been falsely identified as the shooter.

“I could not even sleep last night,” Akram told AFP by phone, adding he deleted all the “terrible” messages he got.

“I’m terrified. I could not go outside, like it’s a life-threatening issue, so I don’t want to risk anything… my family is worried as well, so it´s quite a hard time for me.”

He asked the Pakistan Consulate to put out the video because relatives in the country’s Punjab province were getting phone calls as well.

“It was destroying my image, my family´s image,” he said.

“People started to call them. They were worried, and they have told the police over there.”

The Pakistan native moved to Australia in 2018 to attend Central Queensland University and later did a masters at Sydney´s Holmes Institute.

Today he runs a car rental business, and he said Australia is “the perfect country”.

“I love this country. I have never had any safety issues here, like everyone is so nice, the people are so nice here,” Akram said.

“It’s only this incident that has caused me this trauma.”

— With additional input from AFP

• Nobel Peace Laureate’s health failing, says son Kim Aris.
• Upcoming “sham” election could prompt her release: Aris
• Aris urges Japan, other govt to up pressure on junta. 

With her health failing and an information vacuum around Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her son worries that he may not even know if she passed away.

Kim Aris told Reuters he has not heard from his 80-year-old mother in years, and has received only sporadic, secondhand details about her heart, bone and gum problems since a 2021 military coup that deposed her government.

And while he rejects attempts by Myanmar’s junta to hold elections later this month, dismissed by many foreign governments as a sham aimed at legitimising military rule, he says it could provide an opening to ease his mother’s plight.

“She’s got ongoing health issues. Nobody has seen her in over two years. She hasn’t been allowed contact with her legal team, never mind her family,” he said in an interview in Tokyo. “For all I know, she could be dead already.”

“I imagine (Myanmar junta leader) Min Aung Hlaing has his own agenda when it comes to my mother. If he does want to use her to try and appease the general population before or after the elections by either releasing her or moving her to house arrest, then at least that would be something,” he added.

A Myanmar junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Myanmar’s military has a history of releasing prisoners to mark holidays or important events.

Nobel Peace Laureate Suu Kyi was freed in 2010 days after an election, ending a previous long period of detention largely spent at her colonial-style family home on Yangon’s Inya Lake.

She went on to become Myanmar’s de-facto leader after elections in 2015, the first openly contested vote in a quarter century, though her international image was later tarnished by accusations of genocide committed against her country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

‘Small window of opportunity’

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the 2021 coup, which triggered an armed rebellion that has captured swathes of territory across the country.

Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence for offences including incitement, corruption and election fraud, all of which she denies.

Aris said he believes she is being held in the capital Naypyitaw, and in the last letter he received from his mother two years ago she complained about the extreme temperatures in her cell during the summer and winter months.

With conflicts erupting all over the world, Aris worries that people are forgetting about Myanmar.

He is trying to capitalise on the upcoming elections — the first since the coup which are set to be held in phases from December 28 — to get foreign governments like Japan to exert more pressure on the junta and call for his mother’s release.

“Because of the upcoming elections that the military are trying to stage, which we all know are completely unfair, and so far from being free that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so lamentable, I need to use this small window of opportunity,” he said.

“In the past, when my mother was held in higher regard by the international community, then it was much harder for people to ignore what’s happening in Burma. But since her position was undermined through the crisis in Rakhine, that’s no longer the case,” he added, using the country’s former name.

Aris, a British national who kept a low profile until a few years ago, maintains his mother was “not complicit” in what the United Nations called a genocidal campaign by the military against the Rohingya in Rakhine state in 2016-17.

While she was de-facto leader, Myanmar’s constitution limited Suu Kyi’s power over the military. She admitted that war crimes may have been committed at an international tribunal in The Hague in 2020 but denied genocide.

During his trip to Japan, Aris said he met with various Japanese politicians and government officials to press them to take a stronger stand against the junta and reject the elections.

Asked what his mother would think of his efforts, he said: “I think she’d be incredibly sad that I’ve had to do this. She’s always wanted me to not have to get involved. But I don’t really have a choice at the moment. I am her son after all. And if I’m not doing it, I can’t expect anybody else to do it.”

When she first started learning to ride a motorbike, Iranian Maryam Ghelich, now an instructor, would drive through Tehran’s empty streets at night to avoid scrutiny over her clothing or lack of a licence.

Fifteen years on, Ghelich has trained hundreds of women, helping them navigate not only the capital’s gridlocked streets but the barriers facing women motorcyclists in the conservative Islamic republic, with a marked surge in demand for lessons in recent months.

“This sport was one of my passions, and in Iran it had long been taken for granted that motorcycling was only for men,” she told AFP at a training centre in northern Tehran.

On streets and at intersections across Iran, women on mopeds and motorbikes wearing colourful helmets have become an increasingly common sight, signalling a subtle but noticeable shift in social attitudes over a matter of months.

“I tried to prove that women can also have successful participation in this field,” said 49-year-old Ghelich, a long-time member of Iran’s Motorcycling and Automobile Federation.

Ghelich, who is a certified instructor with the federation, explained how she had watched the change unfold in real time after spending more than a decade as one of only a handful of women riders.

“People’s perspectives in our society have really changed. It wasn’t accepted at all before,” she said, explaining there has been a sharp rise in women enrolling in her courses in recent months, whether for city riding or for racing.

“When I see the women we trained out riding on the streets, I really enjoy seeing that families are now accepting it,” she added.

Licensing issue

Despite the progress, motorbike and scooter licensing for women remains a major hurdle in Iran and a legally grey area.

While traffic laws do not explicitly ban women from riding, authorities have never issued motorcycle licences to them in practice, with the issue gaining urgency with the noticeable rise in women riding.

Niloufar, a 43-year-old fashion designer who asked only to be identified by her first name and who recently joined Ghelich’s city-riding course, said the lack of licences is of serious concern.

“Even if a woman rides very professionally, without a licence she will legally be blamed if she has an accident, even if she’s the victim,” she said.

Publicly, authorities have maintained that women can ride motorcycles. Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said there is “no legal prohibition”.

And in September, the head of Iran’s traffic police, Teymour Hosseini, said his officers did not have authorisation to give their own interpretation to the law on religious or any other grounds.

“The police enforce the law… whatever is issued, we are obliged to implement,” he added.

But others have continued to refer to the Islamic republic’s dress code, in place since shortly after the 1979 revolution and requiring women to wear loose clothing and cover their head and neck, as a block to women riding motorcycles.

“Some ride motorcycles with no hijab, improper hijab, or poor covering… such behaviour is against Sharia law,” said Abdolhossein Khosropanah of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a state body overseeing Islamic cultural and educational policy.

Ultraconservative lawmaker Mohammed Seraj has argued: “Women riding motorcycles is improper and not compatible with the society’s culture.”

‘No reason to object’

Ghelich said clothing restrictions have long posed challenges for women riders.

She recalled races years ago when women participants were required to wear “long overalls” over their leather suits — a rule that she said “really restricted” riding.

But conditions for riding have eased over time, she said, and that even when police “seize motorcycles now, they let people go more easily, they give it back faster”.

Women in Iran have more broadly pushed against social boundaries in recent years, increasingly defying the Islamic republic’s strict rules, including the mandatory dress code.

The trend has accelerated after the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly violating hijab rules.

Mona Nasehi, a 33-year-old beauty salon owner who began riding this year, said police once attempted to stop her — possibly because she was riding alone — but she was too afraid to pull over.

“I had heard from friends that police usually don’t mistreat women riders, but we all still have that fear that they might insult us or take our bike,” she said.

Nayereh Chitsazian, 53, who bought her motorbike last week, said that while her licence is the missing piece, all her other documentation is in place.

“The police have no reason to object,” she said.

“The motorcycles are registered, insured, so there’s no reason for them to stop us.”