Islamist terrorism in Australia: what the record shows, and what vetting missed

On the evening of 14 December 2025, two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach. About 1,000 people were there. Fifteen were killed, including a 10-year-old girl, and more than 40 were hurt. Police say the attackers, a father and son, were inspired by Islamic State.

Bondi has sharpened an old question. Is Islamist terrorism here a product of the migration program, and did the people paid to vet and watch for danger miss what they should have seen? This page tests the record since 2014 against courts, coroners, ASIO and the royal commission.

The subject here is Islamist ideology and the people who acted on it, not Muslims. Australia has about 813,000 Muslims, 3.2% of the population (2021 Census). The attackers listed here number eight. One of the people who disarmed a Bondi gunman, Ahmed al-Ahmed, is a Syrian-Australian Muslim. He was shot twice doing it.

Key facts, as at 20 October 2026

• Islamist attacks in Australia have killed 20 people since September 2014, not counting the attackers; 15 of them died at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025 (coroners, courts, NSW Police).
• ASIO's Director-General said on 24 June 2026 that ASIO and police have foiled 31 major terrorism plots since 2014.
• Australia's national terrorism threat level is PROBABLE, and Mike Burgess said on 24 June 2026 that the label "does not tell the full story".
• Of the eight attackers listed on this page, five were born overseas but only two arrived in Australia as adults.
• The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion announced on 12 October 2026 a further closed hearing on the Bondi attack, and its final report is due on 18 December 2026.
• In May 2026 counsel assisting the royal commission said there was no evidence that law enforcement or intelligence agencies held information suggesting an armed attack on the Bondi event.

What Islamist attacks has Australia suffered since 2014?

Seven attacks since September 2014 were driven by Islamist ideology, mostly support for Islamic State.

• Endeavour Hills, Victoria, 23 September 2014. Numan Haider, 18, stabbed two police officers and was shot dead. He was carrying an Islamic State flag. ASIO had been watching his rapid radicalisation but had not judged him dangerous. His passport had been cancelled.
• Lindt Cafe, Sydney, 15–16 December 2014. Man Haron Monis took hostages in a Martin Place cafe. Two hostages died. Tori Johnson was killed by Monis. Katrina Dawson was killed by a ricocheting police bullet when police stormed the cafe.
• Parramatta, Sydney, 2 October 2015. Farhad Jabar, aged 15, shot dead police accountant Curtis Cheng outside NSW Police headquarters. Three men were later jailed for their roles, including one sentenced to 44 years.
• Brighton, Melbourne, 5 June 2017. Yacqub Khayre shot dead receptionist Kai Hao and wounded three police officers. He referred to Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Khayre also died.
• Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9 November 2018. Hassan Khalif Shire Ali set fire to a ute and attacked passers-by with a knife. Cafe owner Sisto Malaspina, 74, died and two others were injured. The Victorian coroner found the attack was a premeditated act of terrorism inspired by Islamic State.
• Wakeley, Sydney, 15 April 2024. A 16-year-old allegedly stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel during a livestreamed service. He is charged with committing a terrorist act, which carries life imprisonment. No one died. His case had not been finalised in the latest court report we could confirm (ABC, October 2025).
• Bondi Beach, Sydney, 14 December 2025. Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead by police at the scene. His son Naveed, 24, was wounded and arrested. Police found two Islamic State flags in their car, and four homemade bombs that failed to explode.

No Islamist attack has been recorded in Australia so far in 2026. That is not because the threat has gone. ASIO's Director-General, Mike Burgess, said on 24 June 2026 that ASIO and police have foiled 31 major terrorism plots since 2014, and resolved 14 significant terror-related cases since Bondi alone. The two 2026 incidents he described in Western Australia were allegedly driven by neo-Nazi and extreme right-wing ideas, not Islamism.

Who were the attackers, and how did they come to be here?

There is no official, published breakdown of everyone convicted of terrorism in Australia by birthplace or visa. Anyone quoting a precise national percentage should be asked for the source. What can be done is to check each attacker since 2014.

• Man Haron Monis (Lindt). Born in Iran. Arrived in 1996 on a one-month business visa, then applied for protection. Granted asylum in 2001 and citizenship in 2004. Arrived as an adult. Iran later sought his extradition; Australia has no extradition treaty with Iran.
• Sajid Akram (Bondi). An Indian national from Hyderabad. Arrived in November 1998 on a student visa, moved to a partner visa in 2001, and lived here as a permanent resident on resident return visas. Arrived as an adult. Indian police said he had no criminal record in India.
• Yacqub Khayre (Brighton). Born in Somalia. Came to Australia in 1991, aged three, as a refugee from a camp in Kenya.
• Hassan Khalif Shire Ali (Bourke Street). Born in Somalia in 1988. Arrived with his family as a refugee in 1993, aged about five, and became a citizen in 1996 (Victorian coroner, 2021).
• Farhad Jabar (Parramatta). Born in Iran, of Iraqi Kurdish background. We could not confirm from a fetched source when he arrived or at what age.
• Naveed Akram (Bondi, accused). Born in Australia. An Australian citizen.
• Numan Haider (Endeavour Hills) and the Wakeley accused. Sources we fetched do not confirm where either was born. Haider was of Afghan descent.

So five of the eight were born overseas, and one is confirmed as Australian-born. That over-representation is real and should not be waved away. But look at the ages. Of the five born overseas, only two arrived as adults. Two arrived as small children through the refugee program. A three-year-old and a five-year-old cannot be security-screened for an ideology they had not yet met.

Most of the men who killed here in the name of Islamic State were not radicalised before they arrived. They were radicalised here, and watched here.

That is the honest answer to "did vetting let them in?" For six of the eight, there was nothing at entry to vet, because they were born here, came as children or their arrival is unconfirmed. The two who came as adults had no known record of extremism when they arrived. Both visa decisions were made under the Howard government.

Where did vetting and monitoring actually fail?

In case after case the attacker was already known to the authorities, and the system did not join the dots.

Lindt Cafe: bail, a pest file and an illegal gun. When Monis took hostages, he was on bail. He was charged as an accessory to the murder of his former wife and with more than 40 sexual assault offences. ASIO had reviewed him thoroughly in 2008–09 and found he was not involved in politically motivated violence. On 9 December 2014, six days before the siege, ASIO received calls about his Facebook page. It reviewed his posts and found nothing to indicate violence. The shotgun he used was unlicensed and should have been surrendered in the 1996 or 1998 buybacks.

Brighton: a parolee with a terror history. Khayre had been charged over a 2009 plot to attack Holsworthy Army Barracks. He was acquitted in December 2010. In December 2016 he was released on parole after a five-year sentence for a home invasion. He was wearing a GPS ankle monitor when he killed Kai Hao.

Bourke Street: managed as "low risk" too soon. Shire Ali's passport was cancelled on 23 July 2015 because ASIO believed he planned to travel to Syria. The coroner found in June 2021 that Victoria Police's security unit decided "prematurely" to manage him as low risk. He found "missed opportunities" for referral to the anti-extremism unit and "missed investigative opportunities". He also found he could not conclude that the attack would have been prevented if those gaps had been filled. Weeks before the attack, Shire Ali had been bailed on unrelated matters.

Bondi: known to ASIO, six guns in the house, and an overseas trip. Naveed Akram came to ASIO's attention in October 2019. The Prime Minister said ASIO examined him "on the basis of being associated with others" and assessed there was "no indication of any ongoing threat". The investigation was into Isaac El Matari, the leader of an Islamic State cell in Sydney. Naveed also followed William Haddad, the preacher at the centre of Australia's pro-Islamic State network.

Meanwhile his father held a NSW firearms licence from 2015 and had six registered guns. Father and son lived in the same house. From 1 to 28 November 2025 the two travelled to Davao City in the southern Philippines. No alarm went off. A former official said in December 2025 that "it really is concerning that no alarms went off". The Home Affairs Movement Alert List, which holds more than a million names, was expected to be central to the review.

There is no public evidence the pair trained with a terrorist group there. The question is why nobody connected an ASIO subject, a household arsenal and a month in Mindanao.

A reform left on the shelf. In 2019, Dennis Richardson's review of the intelligence laws found the electronic surveillance laws should be scrapped and rewritten. The government agreed in 2021 to set up a taskforce to do it. As of January 2026 the new law had still not been delivered, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. That delay spans the Morrison and Albanese governments.

What does ASIO say about who is radicalising now?

The national terrorism threat level is PROBABLE. That means a terrorist attack or attack planning is likely. In his annual threat assessment on 24 June 2026, Mike Burgess said "PROBABLE does not tell the full story". The next level, EXPECTED, applies only when ASIO has intelligence about a specific attack. He said ASIO is discussing a new system with Home Affairs.

His description of today's radicalisation is the most important part of the speech. People are increasingly radicalised by strangers online, not associates in the real world. They are radicalised alone, not in groups. It happens "in weeks", not months or years. And individuals are "all too often being radicalised as minors". Instead of "prayer halls or backyards", they gather in encrypted chat rooms.

He also said Islamic State and al-Qa'ida are "growing their capability to conduct and inspire attacks". But he warned against treating Sunni extremism as the only problem. After Bondi there were calls to focus there. "This made sense when ISIS and al-Qa'ida were the principal security threats," he said, "but contemporary terrorism is far more complex."

For the migration debate the meaning is direct. A boy radicalised in weeks on an encrypted app was not missed at an airport. That threat is caught online, at school, at home or by police.

How often has Australia cancelled visas or stripped citizenship?

Citizenship. Since 2015, dual citizens who engage in terrorism have been liable to lose their Australian citizenship. From 2020 this needed a ministerial decision. The High Court then struck down the minister's powers twice. In Alexander (8 June 2022) it ruled that the power to remove citizenship for fighting with Islamic State was invalid, because it let a minister impose what is really a criminal punishment. In Benbrika (1 November 2023) it said the same of the power to strip citizenship after a terrorism conviction. Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who arrived from Algeria in 1989, got his citizenship back.

A person also cannot be left stateless. Islamic State recruiter Neil Prakash had his citizenship revoked in December 2018 on the basis he held Fijian citizenship. Fiji said he never had. He was extradited to Australia in 2022 to face terrorism charges here. The government has not published a full running count of citizenship losses that we could verify, so we do not give one.

Visas. After Bondi, Parliament passed the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act 2026 on 20 January 2026. The House vote was 116 to 7 and the Senate vote 38 to 22. Among other things, it gives the Home Affairs Minister powers to cancel or refuse the visas of hate preachers. We could not find published figures on how often the new visa power has been used.

What reviews followed Bondi, and what have they found?

On 21 December 2025 the Prime Minister asked Dennis Richardson, a former head of ASIO, to review whether federal police and intelligence agencies had the right powers, structures and information-sharing. A public report was due by the end of April 2026. On 12 March 2026 Mr Richardson resigned from his role assisting the royal commission, according to a statement from federal MP Andrew Wallace. We could not confirm the findings of his work from a published report.

On 9 January 2026 the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was set up under former High Court judge Virginia Bell. It received more than 7,400 submissions.

Its interim report on 30 April 2026 made 14 recommendations, five of them classified. They include a full-time national counter-terrorism coordinator, uniform gun laws, a national gun buyback, a review of joint counter-terrorism teams and more security at high-risk Jewish events. It found the existing laws had not hindered the agencies. But the chapter on what the agencies actually did was withheld, to protect national security and the criminal trial. Commissioner Bell has said she proposes to publish "substantial parts" of the confidential volumes once the criminal case ends. The final report is due by 18 December 2026, after a four-day extension.

So whether Bondi could have been stopped still has no public answer ten months on. Naveed Akram faces 59 charges laid on 17 December 2025, including 15 counts of murder, plus 19 more added on 10 June 2026. His matter is next listed on 28 October 2026. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Latest, 20 October 2026. The royal commission's public hearings ended in August. On 12 October 2026 it announced one more hearing on the Bondi attack, to be held in private "to avoid prejudice to national security and the ongoing criminal proceedings", according to Jewish community outlet J-Wire. At the opening of the second hearing block in May, counsel assisting Richard Lancaster SC said there was no evidence to suggest law enforcement or intelligence agencies had information about a planned armed attack on the event, and that 11 people were shot within 29 seconds (ABC News, 25 May 2026). On the same day Mike Burgess told the commission that ASIO's review of past terror cases after it raised the threat level in August 2024 covered only the previous 12 months, so the Akrams, examined in 2019, were not re-examined. He called that a resourcing judgement and said "we were not leaving serious matters untreated or uninvestigated" (ABC News, 25 May 2026). How ASIO handled Naveed Akram in 2019 is therefore still unanswered in public.

What did governments get right?

Thirty-one major plots foiled since 2014 is a real achievement, built across Coalition and Labor governments. ASIO says its counter-terrorism workforce in 2025 was almost double that of 2005. After Bondi, Parliament passed new extremism laws within six weeks and a royal commission was set up within four. Those responses were serious and quick.

The verdict: what is true, and what is not?

Claim: "Islamist terrorism in Australia is an imported problem." Partly supported. Five of the eight attackers since 2014 were born overseas, an over-representation that is real. But only two arrived as adults. Most were radicalised in Australia, often as teenagers, and two arrived as refugee children.

Claim: "Vetting let the Bondi gunman into the country." Not supported. Sajid Akram arrived in 1998 with no known criminal record or extremist link. Nothing published shows a red flag at entry. His son was born here.

Claim: "The authorities knew about the Bondi attackers beforehand." Supported, with a caveat. ASIO examined Naveed Akram in 2019 and judged him no ongoing threat. His father kept six registered guns, and the pair's month in the Philippines raised no alarm. Whether a different decision was reasonable is the question the royal commission's confidential chapter covers.

Claim: "Australia strips terrorists of their citizenship." Not supported in practice. The High Court struck down the minister's powers in 2022 and 2023, and a person cannot be left stateless, as the Prakash case showed.

Claim: "ASIO says the new threat is young people radicalised online." Supported. ASIO said exactly this in June 2026: alone, online, in weeks and "all too often" as minors.

Claim: "Islamists are the only terrorist threat." Not supported. ASIO's 2026 assessment names neo-Nazi, extreme right-wing, mixed-ideology and state-directed threats. Both WA cases it described in 2026 were alleged to be right-wing.

For the wider pattern of attacks on Jewish Australians, read antisemitism and political violence since 2023. On how refugees enter the program, see the refugees the region won't absorb; the other hubs are Crime and Immigration & Islamism, and our standards are on the methodology page. For how other countries are changing course, see Europe and the US on migration and Islamism.