A man accused of shooting dead 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in an antisemitic terror attack faced a lengthy delay in getting a gun license because of a bureaucratic mishap, not because he raised suspicions, an Australian state government leader said on Tuesday.

Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the attack, and his 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram, are accused of targeting some 1,000 Jews celebrating Hanukkah on December 14, in Australia’s worst mass shooting since 1996.

Questions have been raised about how the 50-year-old father came to legally own six rifles and shotguns.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns on Tuesday confirmed that the father applied for a state license to own firearms in 2000, three years before it was granted. The process typically takes six to 10 weeks.

“The latest information that we have is that there was a real mess in relation to the bureaucracy when it comes to gun licenses and the delays related to that — not a specific threat” posed by the father, Minns told reporters.

Reporters asked Minns on Monday why the father was allowed to own guns when he shared his Sydney home with Naveed Akram, who had been investigated in 2019 by the spy agency Australian Security Intelligence Organization over his extremist links.

“I don’t know. I’d give anything to go back a week, month, two years, to ensure that didn’t happen. But we need to make sure that we take steps so that it never happens again,” Minns said.

A wide-ranging and powerful form of public investigation known as a royal commission will examine the circumstances surrounding the massacre and the surge of antisemitism in Australia since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel sparked the war in Gaza.

New South Wales Parliament was asked this week to pass laws that Minns said would provide the state with Australia’s toughest gun laws.

Experts say footage of the attack shows the gunmen apparently using guns with straight-pull mechanisms, which enable more rapid fire than a comparable bolt-action mechanism.

Straight-pull guns would not be available to recreational shooters such as Sajid Akram under the proposed new laws.

The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a gun........

© The Times of Israel